--- title: "The 200 billion e-sports market awaits its rebirth" type: "Topics" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/topics/43098641.md" description: "Zebra Consumer: Ren Jianxin This year is a major sports year, which also includes esports events. Currently, the Esports World Cup is being held in Paris, with 200 teams and 2,000 players from around the world competing for $75 million in prizes across 24 events. Throughout the second half of the year, the Shanghai DOTA2 International Invitational, Japan Asian Games Esports, Shanghai Valorant Champions Tour, League of Legends World Championship in the US, and PUBG Mobile Global Championship in Turkey will be held in succession, capturing the attention of global players. From grassroots beginnings to brewing a golden age, sliding to rock bottom and then making a king's return..." datetime: "2026-07-31T00:48:29.000Z" locales: - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/topics/43098641.md) - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/topics/43098641.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/topics/43098641.md) author: "[斑马消费](https://longbridge.com/en/profiles/6226040.md)" --- # The 200 billion e-sports market awaits its rebirth Zebra Consumption | Ren Jianxin This year is a major year for sports, which also includes esports events. Currently, the Esports World Cup is being held in Paris, with 200 teams and 2,000 players from around the world competing for a prize pool of $75 million across 24 events. Throughout the second half of the year, the Shanghai DOTA2 International Invitational, the Asian Games Esports in Japan, the Valorant Champions Tour in Shanghai, the League of Legends World Championship in the US, and the PUBG Mobile Global Championship in Turkey will take place in succession, capturing the attention of global players. From grassroots beginnings to brewing a golden age, sliding to rock bottom only to return as kings, China's esports industry has experienced 30 years of ups and downs. It beats in sync with the pulse of the gaming industry and, due to the trend of younger and more female audiences, presents a differentiated industrial landscape. Behind these roaring tournaments lies a market currently valued at 200 billion yuan, with a future potential reaching trillions, waiting for its rebirth. **2026: A Major Year for Esports** With the World Cup concluded, the 热度 (heat) of esports events is on the rise. One of the world's top esports events—the Esports World Cup 2026—is being held in Paris, France. From July 6 to August 23, 200 teams and over 2,000 players from more than 100 countries and regions will compete for championships in 24 game titles, with a total prize pool of $75 million, equivalent to over 500 million RMB. Adding the Shanghai DOTA2 International Invitational in August, the Asian Games Esports in Japan in September, the Valorant Champions Tour in Shanghai from September to October, the League of Legends World Championship S16 in the US from October to November, and the PUBG Mobile Global Championship in Turkey in November, this year will officially enter a "major year" for esports. Only true insiders and hardcore gamers know just how astonishing the esports boom is. Industry data shows that China's broad esports audience is close to 500 million, the vast majority of whom are young people. In recent popular tournaments, live attendance often exceeds 10,000, while online viewership stabilizes at millions, even reaching tens of millions. Even more unexpectedly, the proportion of female users in the esports demographic is rising rapidly, soaring from 36% in 2020 to around 72% in recent years. This explosion in fan support has significantly boosted market activity and purchasing power. Consumption habits in the esports market have thus changed. Previously, fans favored live stream tipping, buying gaming peripherals, and virtual items; now they are keen on attending offline events and engaging in fan consumption, showing an overall trend of moving from virtual to real-world engagement. Continuous esports events, growing user bases, and enhancing fan atmosphere are driving sustained growth in the esports market. Data indicates that China's esports market size was around 170 billion yuan in 2025, representing a year-on-year growth of approximately 19%. Among this, live streaming revenue accounts for 80%, while tournament and club revenues combined make up 10%. Surrounding this hundred-billion-yuan market, numerous companies are involved. Led by Tencent and NetEase, they hold dominant rights over top esports IPs like \*League of Legends\*, \*Honor of Kings\*, and \*DOTA2\* through their game products. Perfect World Esports, under Perfect World, has long exclusively operated top-tier events like DOTA2 and CS; Electric Soul Network invests in event execution and owns self-developed PC esports titles like \*Dream Three Kingdoms\*; Zheshang Culture and Shengtian Network focus on offline venues and regional event hosting; Sunway Technology specializes in the digital upgrade of internet cafes and esports hotels; Thunderobot focuses on esports equipment; Douyu and Huya dominate esports live streaming, and so on. Together, they form a unique esports sector within the pan-entertainment market. Whenever a hot event or IP breaks out, the market welcomes a wave of esports-related stock performance. **Where There Are Games, There Is Esports** Since the advent of games, with competition, rivalry, and win/loss outcomes, esports has existed. In the 1990s, internet cafes gradually became popular in China. Cafe owners organized various grassroots competitions to attract users, nurturing the esports atmosphere. Later, with the emergence of "battle platforms," competition finally stepped out of individual internet cafes. Entering the new century, online games like \*Legend of Mir\* entered the Chinese market, quickly bridging the distance between players in the virtual world, and esports entered a period of high-speed growth. In 2001, Ma Tianyuan and Wei Jidi won the championship in the StarCraft event of the World Cyber Games (WCG), becoming the first world champions in Chinese esports history. In the following years, Chinese players frequently won titles in events such as the CPL Winter Championship DOOM3, WCG Warcraft III, WEG (CS World Championship), and WCG Asian Championships DOTA. In the global esports landscape, China finally secured its place. During this process, the path toward professionalization in esports became clearer. In 2003, electronic sports were listed as the 99th official sport by the General Administration of Sport of China. In 2005, WE, the first professional esports club in Chinese history, was established. In 2011, Tencent acquired Riot Games, the developer of \*League of Legends\* and \*Valorant\*. Two years later, the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) launched. In 2015, Tencent's core product \*Honor of Kings\* went live, followed by the King Pro League (KPL) the next year, maintaining the same flavor. In 2018, the Jakarta Asian Games included \*Honor of Kings\*, \*Clash Royale\*, \*League of Legends\*, \*Hearthstone\*, and \*StarCraft II\* as demonstration events, with the Chinese team winning two golds and one silver. The first three titles are under Tencent; the latter two come from Blizzard, whose China operations partner with NetEase. After the rise of leading game companies like Tencent and NetEase, the model of using esports events to operate users became increasingly mature, ushering in a golden age for China's esports market. However, around 2022, the heat of the esports market took a sharp turn downward, with fewer events, some cancellations, and declining market attention. The reasons lie in the fading of the gaming industry boom created during special periods, and additionally, game license controls affected industry cycles and the product cycles of leading game companies, thereby impacting the esports market. The relationship between games and esports is this tight and direct. When the gaming industry is booming, esports is needed to connect with users. From the user's perspective, too, only sufficiently popular game products are worth operating as esports titles; the events esports users care about most are always the games they love to play themselves. **Esports Light: Why Shine Again?** In recent years, the primary reason for the resurgence of the esports market is that the gaming industry has entered a period of high-speed growth. The \*2025 China Gaming Industry Report\* shows that domestic gaming market sales revenue reached 350.789 billion yuan last year, a year-on-year increase of 7.68%; the number of gaming users broke through 683 million, a year-on-year increase of 1.35%, both hitting historical highs. For the gaming industry, esports events can gather users, strengthen the connection between game IPs and players, which is crucial for the long-term operation of a game product. The enduring popularity of Tencent's \*Honor of Kings\* and \*League of Legends\* is the result of mutual promotion between games and events. For example, \*Clash Royale\*, Supercell's flagship title under Tencent, previously held professional leagues. During a two-year period, game 热度 declined, official focus shifted, and world championships were suspended. In the past two years, game 热度 has warmed up again, and events have restarted. As the gaming market enters a stock era, using esports to stabilize and deepen user relationships becomes even more significant. While the overall Chinese gaming market is upward, squeezed growth and structural trends are obvious—leading products take the vast majority of market share, making it hard for new products to stand out, leaving small and medium-sized game companies in difficult positions. The more pronounced the Matthew Effect, the more importance is attached to esports as an auxiliary market for games. The more severe the stock competition, the more manufacturers pin their hopes on esports business. Additionally, user changes and top-level design have played a significant role in pushing the esports market back into the spotlight. In recent years, PC games have surprisingly become popular, with growth rates far exceeding mobile games. Last year, although mobile games had the largest scale, their growth rate slowed down; PC games, originally ignored by the market, saw revenue grow by 14.97% year-on-year to 78.16 billion yuan. China's first batch of heavy-core gamers has now entered their most powerful spending period. Mainstream esports products are precisely PC games with stronger competitiveness，观赏性 (spectacle value), and higher user stickiness. They support esports projects derived from games they've played since childhood, much like Wang Xinling's fans supporting her concerts. In recent years, multiple cities globally have played the "esports card." In China, cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Wuhan have issued documents explicitly supporting the development of the esports industry. Taking Saudi Arabia as an example, it recently used its financial power to host the Esports World Cup, which was temporarily moved to Paris this year due to regional tensions; originally, Saudi Arabia planned to host the Esports Olympics in 2027, but it was temporarily shelved due to complex international dynamics. Saudi Arabia is investing heavily into the esports industry, aiming to transform Riyadh Boulevard into a global esports hub. Through this top-level design, it attempts to help its transition from a traditional oil kingdom to a digital kingdom. **Esports: Back to Basics** Amidst the boom, the shortcomings of China's esports industry are also obvious. There is a market and users, but there is still a relative lack of esports products and professional soil. Currently, mainstream esports projects like CS, DOTA, and League of Legends mostly come from foreign developers. Although Riot Games was acquired by Tencent, and NetEase partners with Blizzard, the nature of operation cannot be changed. The previous friction between Blizzard and NetEase once shocked the game and esports markets. China's esports market is too affected by fluctuations in the gaming industry, which is also unfavorable for the long-term cultivation of professional talent pipelines. Although the total number of esports practitioners in China exceeds 10 million, there is a lack of global top-tier player IPs, and no one has yet reached the height of Korea's Faker. Moreover, in the Chinese esports market, upstream game manufacturers reap long-term benefits, while live streaming platforms take the majority of immediate returns, leaving limited profit space for event organizers and esports operators. In recent years, game manufacturers have successively taken back operational rights, making things even less friendly for downstream operating companies. This comprehensively imbalanced market situation is not conducive to the continued expansion and strengthening of China's esports industry. Therefore, the direction of effort for the esports industry should return to its roots, focusing on the core point of games and esports. Businesses derived from the concept of esports are mostly turning into bubbles. Esports hotels were originally gathering places for gaming enthusiasts. However, with the impact of chain hotel esports renovations and upgrades in internet cafe services, their disadvantage of low cost-performance ratio has been fully exposed. Amidst homogenized involution, the wave of esports hotel bankruptcies has begun to spread. Electric Soul Network has carved a different path, basing itself on \*Dream Three Kingdoms\* and launching the "National Style Esports" concept, collaborating with cultural and tourism IPs such as Laojun Mountain, Mount Hua, Confucius Temple in Nanjing, and Hengdian World Studios. The so-called "Esports Cultural Tourism" is essentially cultural and tourism operators using esports as a gimmick to attract young people. In actual implementation, it is difficult to sustainably generate revenue and profit. In recent years, esports industrial parks have sprung up like bamboo shoots after rain across many parts of the country. Do the 操盘方 (operators) of those projects believe that simply building the park will attract game companies, esports teams, and users? An esports atmosphere in a city comes from the city's economy, the foundation of the gaming industry, and young players, stemming from long-term operation. Shanghai's status in the national esports circle is unparalleled, ranking first even when placed in the global market. This status is the result of over 20 years of cultivation by various game companies and esports teams. This combination of timing, location, and human factors is basically impossible to replicate in the short term. ### Related Stocks - [DOYU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/DOYU.US.md) - [002624.CN](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/002624.CN.md) - [300494.CN](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/300494.CN.md) - [00700.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/00700.HK.md) - [TCTZF.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/TCTZF.US.md) - [TCEHY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/TCEHY.US.md) - [80700.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/80700.HK.md) - [603258.CN](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/603258.CN.md) - [HTCD.SG](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/HTCD.SG.md) - [09999.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/09999.HK.md) - [09899.HK](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/09899.HK.md) - [HUYA.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/HUYA.US.md) - [300113.CN](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/300113.CN.md) - [600633.CN](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/600633.CN.md) - [RTX.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/RTX.US.md)