After a summer marked by record-breaking prize pools and viewership, esports industry leaders are projecting confidence going into 2025. But while money might be flowing into esports once again, it remains plagued by the same old existential challenges, including its continued reliance on brand partnerships and outside investment to stay afloat.
The esports industry appears to be in a more tenable position that it was at this time last year, with brands from Mastercard to Amazon starting to ramp up their spending around esports as events such as the Esports World Cup inject millions of dollars of prize money into the space. At the same time, esports companies such as the team Ninjas in Pyjamas have continued to go public over the past year, showing that the collapse of FaZe Clan in 2023 has not deterred esports executives from dipping their toes into the public markets.
“We want to be the primary esports team in the world, but also the leading global entertainment industry in the world — so we built out of esports, and entered other verticals that were still related to esports, but they’re not esports,” said Ninjas in Pyjamas CEO Hicham Chahine. “There’s a wider play on 3.4 billion gamers, and not just 600 million esports fans.”
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