The Rise in Football E-Sports and Brazilian Teams Bringing Their Own Samba Party to The Electronic Field

The increase of electronic versions of sport, notably football, in the modern world is growing faster every day and with the introduction of modern internet and technologies will increase and Brazilian teams are taking on board the growing e-sport momentum and incorporating it into their own sponsorships and fans. The Brazilian Association of Games Developers, for example, say that more than 61 Million Brazilians are today participating online gaming either on a mobile app, internet or electronic games. The Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) estimated the industry generated 1.3 Billion $ in the year of 2018 alone and of course is still growing exponentially.

The following information outlined here demonstrates how Brazil’s football clubs are making sure they do not miss the goal on this ever increasing financial and fan base growing opportunity.

E-Football Sports

More than 800 million hours of games were being played in 2018 and overall Brazil has approximately 11.4 million e-sports viewers as a whole according to the Twitch platform with almost half of the audience in Latin America. This puts them on the ladder as the third largest market for consuming e-sports in the world to date just lagging behind the US and China according to Newzoo.

This being the case clubs clubs, brands and backers alike are all discussing the potential opportunities while at the same time trying to get their head around the next move. Of course, investors are also vying to get a piece of the action at the same time pushing the overall opportunity for money-making potential. Ronaldo, for example, has started investing in CBN e-sports Club who are their official e-sports team.

Brazil’s football clubs are also making sure they are well suited to the growth in the industry by creating their own competitive e-sports teams and going head to head with other nations in e-sports tournaments.

Clubs like Paris Saint Germain, Monaco, Valencia and other similar European teams have already now established their own e-sports teams to play against and to keep up with the trend and the financial rewards afforded by the modern day opportunities.

Increasing your portfolio in a football team is like any other asset growth system. Football clubs as a whole are all now following on with this trend by joining forces in increasing e-sports participation to increase the value of the prize funds they can create.

One of the best examples of this is The International Dota 2 championship which was initially organized by Valve back in 2017 which managed to gather funds in the amount of over 24 million USD in the total prize pool.

The final well bet backed winner on of this competition was the representative of Cruzeiro Esporte Clube, Henrique “Henrykinho” Mesquita, who received a trophy hand-delivered during a party that celebrated the best of the Brazilian championship 2017; he also won two tickets for the semi-final phase of Champions League 2017/2018; and a classification for the intercontinental stage of PES League Konami to boot.

Some of the legal issues currently facing the industry

Lawyers are currently considering the legal implications of the industry due to the growth of the overall e-sports industry and the legal scenarios and implications of the clubs. A potential sticking point is labor vs employment relationship one of which is the fact the players are often playing without formal contracts.

There is also a point of order where some of the “Players” are still legally considered as children under international law. Adding to this the use of their photographs and names are another legal sticking point and are currently being investigated as to whether or not this can continue in its current format but none the less there is no doubt both players and fans are ready and waiting for the next round of trials.

Overview

With this growing business opportunity there are many benefits as well as the outlined pitfalls so the jury is still “out” but at the same time, the industry is still making financial gains as the lawyer’s battle out the pros and cons. There is no doubt the end game will fall in the hands of the financial investors, clubs, players and such like the legal wrangling will still need to go on until the results are settled at this “stage of the game”.

Undoubtedly there will be many more questions and issues that will need to be sorted out but at the end of the day the e-sports business will continue to grow as a whole new financial tool for the sporting industry.