Esports and Livestreamed Gaming Remain Popular with Younger Generations

April 7, 2023

Video games continue to be big business in the US: the overall market, excluding esports, is expected to overtake the TV advertising market in size in the next few years. Some 69% of American households contain at least one video game player and 41 million households are active on a gaming console during a typical month, according to a recent presentation [download page] from Comscore.

Some other stats illustrate the appeal of gaming content: for example, there were 229 million monthly unique visitors to gaming sites or mobile apps in December 2022, representing 83% reach among the total US digital population.

Notably, people are not only playing games, but watching others play them too. In fact, Comscore reports 183% growth in time spent watching gaming videos on desktop from December 2019 to December 2022.

With respect to watching gaming livestreamed, 77% of respondents report having ever done so, according to an accompanying November 2022 survey of 4,445 Americans ages 18-65. Not surprisingly, there’s an age bias in these results: 89% of Gen Zers say they’ve ever watched livestreamed gaming, as have 81% of Millennials. That figure drops to 70% among Gen Xers and 47% of Boomers.

Among gamer types, PC gamers are the most apt to have ever watched gaming livestreamed, with 85% professing to have done so. Console gamers are right on the average (77%) in this capacity, while only about one-third (32%) of mobile-only gamers have ever watched livestreamed gaming. Comscore separately reports that “mobile-only gamers are a decidedly different type of gamer,” noting that they tend to be older, play a narrower set of games, and are much less likely to identify as a “hardcore gamer.”

Six in 10 livestream viewers say they’ve watched for more than one hour in a single sitting, with Gen Zers (72%) the most likely to have tuned in for a long period of time. Almost half (46%) of livestream watchers have a favorite game they watch, compared to 35% who have a favorite streamer that they watch. Interestingly, though, Gen Zers say that the streamer (59%) is more important than the game (41%) when choosing a stream to watch, whereas each of the older generations is more likely to make its choice based on the game than the streamer.

Turning to esports, Comscore’s data indicates that 54% of the adults surveyed have ever watched a multiplayer video game competition. This is highest among Millennials (59%), with Gen Zers (52%) and Gen Xers (51%) hewing close to the average and Boomers (35%) finding less appeal in this content.

Esports viewing is more common among PC gamers (63%) than console gamers (53%) and mobile-only gamers (16%), and 70% of esports viewers say they watch with others either “sometimes” or “often.”

Separately, research from Morning Consult indicates that 12% of US adults surveyed in February said they had watched an esports event in the past month, including 29% of respondents who identified as gamers.

For more, download Comscore’s presentation here.

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