Hype Around Esports Is Fading as Investors and Sponsors Dry Up (bloomberg.com) 98
The once-thriving esports industry has fallen on hard times as funding sources dwindle and signs abound that athletic competition via video games doesn't have anywhere near the earning potential investors anticipated. From a report: Sports-business billionaires and gaming executives had hopes that esports could one day could scale into an organization like the National Basketball Association. But after a boom five years ago, several prominent esports teams and organizations, particularly in the US, are contracting, the result of a broad economic downturn, a venture capital industry that's no longer willing to accept growth without profits and a crypto meltdown that has undercut a significant source of backing.
Since the summer, Team SoloMid and 100 Thieves -- the two most valuable esports organizations according to Forbes -- have terminated dozens of positions in total. In November, Evil Geniuses, one of the oldest esports groups, disbanded its North America team that competed in the highly popular game Defense of the Ancients 2 and shifted their operations to South America. Game publishers, too, are shrinking their esports operations and that's trickling down to tournament organizers, teams and players. In early November, Riot Games said it will close its official Wild Rift leagues outside of Asia next year, choosing to focus solely on the world's biggest mobile gaming market. And a popular Super Smash Bros. tournament was terminated after not getting a license from Nintendo.
Investors who were once eager to get in early on what was expected to be a booming industry are now scrutinizing the business fundamentals and not much liking what they see. In 2018, a record $4.5 billion was invested in the industry, including from private equity firms jumping in for the first time, according to a report by Deloitte. That bounty has faded and venture capital investment in esports is the lowest it's been since 2016 -- excluding 2020, when pandemic restrictions threw into question the viability of live esports tournaments -- according to data provided by PitchBook.
Since the summer, Team SoloMid and 100 Thieves -- the two most valuable esports organizations according to Forbes -- have terminated dozens of positions in total. In November, Evil Geniuses, one of the oldest esports groups, disbanded its North America team that competed in the highly popular game Defense of the Ancients 2 and shifted their operations to South America. Game publishers, too, are shrinking their esports operations and that's trickling down to tournament organizers, teams and players. In early November, Riot Games said it will close its official Wild Rift leagues outside of Asia next year, choosing to focus solely on the world's biggest mobile gaming market. And a popular Super Smash Bros. tournament was terminated after not getting a license from Nintendo.
Investors who were once eager to get in early on what was expected to be a booming industry are now scrutinizing the business fundamentals and not much liking what they see. In 2018, a record $4.5 billion was invested in the industry, including from private equity firms jumping in for the first time, according to a report by Deloitte. That bounty has faded and venture capital investment in esports is the lowest it's been since 2016 -- excluding 2020, when pandemic restrictions threw into question the viability of live esports tournaments -- according to data provided by PitchBook.
Makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
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Mostly, it's way, way easier to just do it yourself.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
How is it different from watching people play Basketball, Golf, Poker, etc?
The youngest of those sports was developed by a Canadian well over a century ago [wikipedia.org].
Almost everyone understands the basic rules, they change very slowly, and they've had generations to build up followings.
Popular games last only a few years meaning any one game will only ever have a niche following.
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Almost everyone understands the basic rules, they change very slowly, and they've had generations to build up followings.
Pretty much this. I used to play League pretty regularly, and I would watch the big tournaments because it was fun to see what people at the top of the skill ceiling could do and get the commentary on why they were doing certain things. However, when my second kid came along I fell off and haven't really touched it in 5 or so years, and now coming back in, it has changed so much that I would have a hard time simply grasping what all of the new mechanics are.
Compare that to something like baseball, where
It still takes over a century (Score:2)
So what you are saying is you chose the wrong game? Should have picked Tetris.
From the summary:
For the same reason that Nintendo has the power to approve or deny Smash Bros. tournaments (2013 story [arstechnica.com]; 2022 story [arstechnica.com]), The Tetris Company has power to approve or deny Tetris tournaments. Under current law, Tetris will become viable for esports at the end of the 70th calendar year after Alexey Pajitnov dies.
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Re: Makes sense (Score:3)
chess and bridge and porn are not sports (Score:3)
They are takes of strategy and competition is intense and spirited and people will pay to watch. But they are not "sports" as conventionally used. Stop trying to elevate something changing its name and lingo.
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Watching people hit a ball around a field gets old quick.
Watching people run along a track gets old quick.
Heads up, lots of people enjoy lots of things that you don't.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Funny)
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We just suck.
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I have a friend who was a very, very good roller hockey player, and he made some money playing in Spain for a few years but there is just not the interest for it to be a real pro sport like basketball or football.
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I don't think its about the watching the game from https://medium.com/knowledge-s... [medium.com]
about an NFL game:
in a 3-hour game, the time the ball is in play equals about eleven minutes
for base ball its 17 minutes per 3 hours.
Its about supporting the team and tribalism, e-sports does not have the amount of supporter base, and its still seen as quite nerdy.
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Maybe VERY casual one...but I don't play the latest and greatest, etc....
But then again, I'm like that with live actual sports...a very casual viewer.
I like to watch college football, but will miss games if I have something better to do, and mostly a fan of my alma mater, other games are sometimes.."meh".
With this background, I have to guess I'm at least a decently large part of the potential viewing community, and for the life of me, when I heard about "e-sports" I could not imagine som
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Re: Makes sense (Score:3)
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Err...driving a hybrid isn't gonna get you laid either.
Say what you will...a Porsche, Corvette or BMW will do that job MUCH better, if that's the kind of chick you're after...a car chick.
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You misspelled "a gold digger".
The cars you mention are status/wealth symbols.
Driving a custom rebuilt E30 325iX you did by yourself or one you converted into electric will not garner your interest from persons into "a Porsche, Corvette or BMW" as a category.
Cause that category is not about cars but about latest model of X - as a symbol of wealth and status.
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As for twitch, as was mentioned gamer girls are a thing. In reality, it's about the person/community for the subscribers and long term viewers.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd think that, but there's a lot of money in watching people play video games. Things like Twitch and YouTube have a lot of people watching people play video games.
But eSports aren't just watching people play video games. It's watching teams of people play video games in some form of competitive tournament. Either something styled like sports leagues, where there's a "season" and then eventually that leads to some sort of final tournament based on the teams that qualified, or just the tournament without the lead-up season.
And I'm not really that surprised because eSports are, ultimately, entirely disconnected from the people playing them. When you watch two teams compete in an eSport, you have a bunch of players who are intensely focused on screens, and then you have their avatars doing things somewhere else. But those avatars aren't directly tied to the players. With the example of Super Smash Bros., you're not going to watch Your Favorite Player enter the ring against The Obvious Heel, you're going to watch Mario fight Luigi. But Mario could be either player. He could be an entirely different player. The next day, you might see literally the same avatars on the screen being controlled by entirely different players. The game and the players are disconnected.
You can't watch England take to the field against France in a game of Defense of the Ancients 2. You could see a team controlled by English players go up against a team of French players, but in the game, they'd still be controlling the same avatars any other player could use.
It's not because people don't want to watch people play video games, because trust me, they do. It's that they want to watch people play video games, and not corporate sponsored teams.
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But this is also true of so many sports and hobbies now. The guy who can go around the track the fastest may or may not make the most money. It's the guy or gal who can put an interesting spin on it by consistently doing something novel and making engaging videos about it who is cashing in.
For example Danny MacAskill's bicycle trick videos. They're very creative and fun to watch. Whereas I'm sure there's some sort of orga
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Part of the problem I've seen is the dominance of Korean players in esports that don't speak English. Sure it's great for a team to play well, but the fans can't really get behind a player they can't understand as well as if they were conducting interviews and such. If the avatar in game changes or is generic (even if you dress them up as the team, no one cares about Mario with UK flag), and the players are foreign and disconnected then there's not much to cheer for season to season so they tend to just
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If that were the problem, then it would be easily solved by putting "England" and "France" jerseys on Mario and Luigi according to who's controlling them. In reality that does precisely nothing.
Has someone tried it? I've watched a lot of competitive esports, including attending an event in an arena in person, and I've never seen anyone actually try that. It might work.
I am reminded of the early days of professional ball sports. In the late 1800s when baseball was trying to professionalize itself, there were hundreds of teams. Team loyalty among attendees of games was weak to nonexistent except for teams which were named after the city they were in. Since there could be dozens of teams organiz
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Sounds like an idea for the video based face transplant tech to be put into gaming engines so actual player faces will be shown in the avatars.
But I will still not watch it, lol.
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I think that's probably the problem.
Why sponsor a League of Legends eSports team, when you can probably get far more coverage spending by sponsoring a bunch of people on Twitch?
The fact is, eSports is limited - you can't take any videogame and turn it into an eSports league easily. But you can take any videogame and sponsor Twitch matches with them very easily and cheaply.
I suppose the other problem is well, a lot of teams are Asian, and that's a whole other ball of wax given current geopolitics. Especiall
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Watching people play videogames gets old quick.
Unless that person is a Twitch streamer. Watching esports of any type is worse than watching the grass grow, but watching a good Twitch streamer is like watching a good comedy show.
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Re: Makes sense (Score:2)
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Tell that to my kids. We limit their screen time and their limits are almost entirely taken up with YouTube personalities playing video games.
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And yet we're talking about the decline of specific e-sports, not the decline of Twitch. Maybe re-think your reasoning. It could be you're biased by something you personally don't like to do.
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Watching people play videogames gets old quick.
To you maybe, but many young people would disagree. I used to participate in a forum designed to help people with video editing and in the previous decade, we were getting a lot of posts asking for help with issues from capturing video game play. You'd be surprised how many times that stuff came up. The basic problem was the video games were outputting video that was pushing the outer boundaries of what was possible at the time to capture without spending a fortune on specialized PC capture cards. A
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This stuff is my number one gripe about Zoomers and Millennials - they have created seemingly infinite ways to make money at dead end jobs. What is society going to be like when all these 40+ year old Zoomers can't make a living at playing video games or making YouTube videos as influencers? It's probably going to be ugly.
Then you, and me, as much-older-than-40-year-olds, will not be hurting for employment.
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Easy money is drying up, if not dried up already.
Many people, including the rich/investors are concerned about Russia, China, inflation, interest rates, etc.
So of course less likely to invest / sponsor in something uncertain.
So, why are people surprised?
Major investment needed? (Score:2)
Maybe one of the big crypto exchanges would like to invest in e-sports!?! Could have Binance or FTX sponsorships!
Oh... wait...
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Maybe a government bailout would help?
The Chinese government, perhaps?
High Hopes (Score:2)
There's also the issue of computer games generally not having the same longevity as actual sports. I do realize that the basketball played today isn't quite the same as
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If I am reading this [statista.com] correctly, it has triple just in 15 years.
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SportsBall (NBA, NFL, etc....) only became big because of television. When television networks started paying huge amounts of money for the rights to broadcast games - things really took off. Team owners became billionaires and players started getting big contracts. Universities make lots of money from television broadcasts of their sportsball games.
TV did not make sports big in the USA, although I'd be a fool to argue it did not make sports bigger. It's trivial to point out how popular e.g. professional baseball and college football were in the USA long before crazy TV money.
license from Nintendo to run an event? (Score:2)
Nintendo doesn't let you do what sega does.
Nintendo does not like fun stuff unless they ok but sega is very open to free fan stuff.
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The big eSports games are MOBAs, tactical team shooters, RTSs, and fighting games. With the exception of Smash, Nintendo doesn't really have a big presence in these communities. And yeah, Nintendo's attitude has held Smash back in that context, but I don't think they really care. They want it to be a casual pick-up-and-play game, not Blazblue or Street Fighter.
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You also can take football from my cold dead hands. It is useful thing to talk to people about. The managers don't like dead air.
The owners of all the leagues can go die in a grease fire. You will not find someone who will disagree with me on that.
Starcraft II was good (Score:2)
I really enjoyed watching Starcraft II matches. Maybe even better than watching a hockey game.
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yeah, RTS are more engaging for sure. Seeing how a player's strategy plays out and adapts to an enemy's is way more interesting that if a player's twitch reflexes are good enough to land a head shot. I especially like big team fight games, Supreme Commander:FAF was my favorite but Beyond all Reason has taken over lately, and it gets bonus points for being FOSS.
Not too much different (Score:5, Insightful)
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Was your friend one of the best players in the world?
I ask because sitting on the side line at school watching other people kick a ball around was boring as fuck, yet lots of people obsess about watching other people kick a ball around in the world cup.
Skill makes a difference. No one wants to watch joe average. Yet people are fascinated by top tier Twitch streamers.
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Yes, some players are fun to watch.
For example Arino from Game Center CX [wikipedia.org].
Random episode video Game Center CX 132 - Battletoads [archive.org]
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No, you're opposed to skill and being matched against people who hone their skill. What you're describing is a fundamental part of every sport or every skill. The person who wins when you go play pool is the person who spends the most time at it. The person who wins when you go play soccer is the person who spends the most time at it.
There's nothing specific here about internet gameplay. What you could be against is poor matchmaking, which unfortunately exists. But for the most part in many games today onli
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Such fads are actually rather common (Score:2)
For example in the 1970s there was a "Fußball" fad in Germany. It's a kind of sport where people try to get a ball into a goal by using their feet. The hype was so ginormous that in 1972 famous singer and philosopher decided to try his hand (or foot) at it. This was so shocking that they made a movie about it, "Libero" (1973).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
In fact in 1974 an international "Fußball" competition was even transmitted live nearly world wide. The rights to do so were even sold for th
Prefer RPG Playthoughs (Score:2)
I like watching or listening to people playing RPGs. I don't have time to play most of these games, but like hearing how the story goes. Listening to sports, or esports, in the background just doesn't work for me the same
I'm a gamer (Score:2)
And have been both making and playing games since the early 80s.
E-sports for me was never a thing, however when it was small it was (at least for me) all about the social gathering, swapping coding tips, gaming tips, meeting new friends and even swapping games.
It was both private AND commercialized since the 80s, I don't know if anyone of you remember Twin Galaxies? It was the name of an Video Arcade hall somewhere in America, totally unknown to me since I lived in Norway back then and the Internet wasn't r
I never saw it as "sports" (Score:3)
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Is it because the skilled players weren't wearing kilts? https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c... [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
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Is it only a sport when you profusely sweat? In which case we should turn professional house building into a sport, and remove basically 3/4 of what ESPN shows.
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Is it because the skilled players weren't wearing kilts? https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c... [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
Sport/game - we need to differentiate between competitive games and games that are, what's the word... FUN?
It's not a video game problem, it's a people problem when anything gets too competitive.
MLB doesn't mess with your kid's farm league. Competitive gaming ruins whole genres of video games. RTS games tend to play a specific way now, compared to the diversity from the late 90's. Star Wars Squadrons was DOA, because random casual players really dig 4v4 games against pros... So many game communities deat
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Sport/game - we need to differentiate between competitive games and games that are, what's the word... FUN?
So the requirement for something to be a legit sport is to no longer be fun? That's weird. I heard all these professional sports people were living their dream. I had no idea Ronaldo didn't like kicking a ball. *confused*.
Star Wars Squadrons was DOA, because random casual players really dig 4v4 games against pros...
You're describing exclusively a matchmaking problem, not a problem with sports, or people being competitive. There are countless games in the world played by hyper competitive people and absolute n00bs and they have no problems getting along just fine. Games like Squadrons where your skill
Called sports, but treated like?? (Score:1)
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But the point is so obvious to me, that I think others must have thought of it first and rejected it for reasons I'm not aware of
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Have you ever watched an game tournament (in the last 10 years)? It seems like you have no idea what you are talking about.
Most of the team games that target esports have TV broadcast-like modes do all those things.
Map overviews, external cameras, different map visualizations, track multiple players, near real-time replays.
Not too different from watching football or golf.
Non team games (Streetfighter, etc) don't need that, all the action is straight on the screen.
The big thing (as a lot of people have ment
Low on funds? Cant they just keep grinding out (Score:1)
Regular sports works, eSports doesn't (Score:3)
That kind of thinking sees the trees and misses the forest. There's a reason sports work: Sports is culture. You may not get what that is and why that's important if you're posting on Slashdot, but it is extremely important.
Sports teams represent a culture. The definition of culture is "the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group". So who is that social group? It could be anyone; a state, a city, a University, etc., anyone, but ultimately it's a network of people by whom you belong, and that network would in turn accept you. If you grow up in Detroit but travel to either coast, you might feel lost in the different cultures. But if you find a bar somewhere by ex-Detroit guys and all the play is Lion's games on the TV, you'll likely find others like you; you have found somewhere to belong. Same with Universities; you may be 20 years graduated from a University, but with the schools that manage culture well you're always a part of that, and when you interact with other alumni (for a job interview for example), you have common ground to connect even if your generations or ethnic backgrounds are different. Dukies are always Dukies, especially during March Madness. Aggies are always Aggies even if you live in upstate New York. Don't even get me started on the Clemson [clemsontigers.com] guys since their football team is doing well.
Sports teams represent that culture. Years out, it ties people together. Why could USC steal a 20 year-long alzheimers study [sandiegouniontribune.com] from UCSD? Because USC has a football team and UCSD does not. No one cares that they went to UCSD because there's no culture to tie them back, but USC people do care as their sports programs keep people invested in the USC culture, which means they donate to USC giving them an endownment fund 100X greater than UCSD; they can buy their way into being Alzheimer's experts.
It's the same with football, where the teams represent regions. They are out there representing a group (even if they switch cities); the Raiders can be in LA or Oakland or Las Vegas, but Raider nation is always Raider nation. The 49ers are a legacy of San Francisco. Patriots fans are different; they're used to the legacy and dominating. Lions fans are used to griping about losing and cold weather. Raider's fans are insane. Boston Red Sox fans have a chip on their shoulder for the Yankees. and on and on. They represent, and even when not connected to those regions, you feel that connection and representation; it's identity based.
So Sports create culture, culture creates communities, and it is the community that supports itself through network, funds, and social gatherings that then reinforces the business of Sports.
What do eSports represent? I had to google the team names. What does 100Thieves represent, other than competitive play and merchandising their own brand? Do they represent a digital culture for a digital age? Do they represent an underrepresented community that never connected to the more common sports in some way? Do they help to create a self-replicating and self-supporting culture and benefit from that?
I don't see it, and this is the result. It built up, a lot of money poured in, crypto over financed it, but ultimately they did not define and represent a community. Who could say they're a 100Thieves fan and what does that mean vs. someone being a Team Liquid fan? Do they define something and stand for something and watch a community build around that identity? Are there the equivalent of gaming bars dedicated to Cloud9 competitions?
It is different. The good sports teams
Just make it like Madden (Score:3)
In Madden you can control Mahomes playing the game of football.
Maybe we need a game where the eSports "athlete" is a puppet in a chair, and you control them as they play Fortnite.
*sip a red bull*
*snipe some noobs*
*bite a donut*
Maybe if they had a little skin in the game (Score:1)
Maybe if they had a little skin in the game it might be more interesting, the odd head butt or dirty tackle, a bit of off ball fisty cuffs. Its Kind of boring compared to real sport.
Karma for the toxic and the soulless (Score:3)
The moneymaking esports are a toxic culture full of toxic people.
Broken, soulless kids with neglectful softheaded parents make up the player base. You have 18 year olds with carpal tunnel, eye problems, back problems, and a jaundiced look from Vitamin C deficiency. Many of them skip college and fuck themselves over when their esports career fails.
I knew a famous Starcraft player (Greg Fields / aka egIdra) at age 12. He was a douche with personality problems... who turned into a famously toxic douche with personality problems who hated the fans that made him relevant in such a public way that a team as garbage as Evil Geniuses was forced to fire him. He was smart enough to go to college for math/physics but somehow thought being good at a video game was more important, making him fucking dumb indeed. At least he got serious about his health and is still alive (see below)
I will never forget EG team captain Geoff 'Incontrol' Robinson tearfully defending Idra in the aftermath. It made me lose all respect for him, one of his points was that "Idra has thousands of fans who still send him stuff on Christmas." Enabling toxic culture much?
Incontrol himself was a total narcissist with an inferiority complex. He liked to mention his hot girlfriend as a source of self worth -- when it was pretty clear that he had none. He died young of blood clots in his leg because he basically sat on his ass all day every day.
Total Biscuit, another 'pillar of the community' and team owner who I liked, died young of a stereotypical gamer diet and sitting on his ass all day every day.
So this 'sport' absolutely has the potential to fuck up your life and even your health. Everyone is figuring it out now.
How do we know if they're e-cheating? (Score:1)
The basic premise of this article makes no sense. (Score:2)
The basic premise of this article makes no sense. It asserts that the decline of the esports industry is due to a lack of funding. The only two ways that this would be true is if:
1. The esports industry is basically unprofitable and was operating at a loss.
2. The esports industryâ(TM)s success is totally dependent on new investment and the establishment of new ventures related to esports.
If #1 is true, then the problem is obvious and has nothing to do with the health of the economy, or crypto, or whate
Get a real job (Score:2)