NEW DELHI: The esports ecosystem might witness a slump of 15-20 per cent post-covid, but the numbers will still be 200 per cent higher than the pre-Covid2019 times, NODWIN Gaming group CEO Sidharth Kedia told Indiantelevision.com. The five-year-old gaming platform is one of the largest esports companies in India and is popular for pioneering several cutting-edge technology innovations in e-sports broadcasting.
Kedia shares that the esports ecosystem witnessed a growth of about 300 per cent during the past quarter. “If I talk about NODWIN, our property India Premiership saw 3000 people registering for the event in the summer of 2019. This year, the number was 57,000. And going by the early indication shared by our streaming partner Disney+ Hotstar, the viewership rose by three times from the last season,” he highlights.
Addressing the speculations about the expected dip post Covid2019, he notes, “If we look at the rise of e-wallets and digital payments during demonetisation and the subsequent dip in their popularity once the situation settled, we noticed that the users still remain on the higher end of the pre-demonetisation times. Same is with esports. Yes, we may expect a 15-20 per cent dip in numbers but it will be after a 300 per cent growth.”
Not just the number of users, the interest of brands has also increased in the e-sports category, given the magnanimous popularity it's enjoying.
“Brands have definitely gained interest in esports. Earlier, we used to spend months trying to get in touch with brands and striking partnerships. But in the past three months, I have got a call from 37 new clients, asking me how they can invest in esports,” shares Kedia.
“Yes, the marketing budgets are low these days; if a brand used to spend Rs 100 on marketing earlier, it is just spending Rs 20-25 now. But, while I was getting only three per cent earlier, now, the brands will be sparing 30-35 per cent for us from those 25 rupees. All the brands who want to reposition themselves or are trying to get the attention of the youth are investing in esports and it will continue even after Covid2019,” he elaborates.
Kedia also put the spotlight on the blurring lines between India and Bharat when it comes to e-sports in today’s time, attributing the growth in popularity of the platforms to increasing mobile penetration.
“Bharat population is much bigger on mobile platforms. Going by Google trends, if you search top ten cities using PubG mobile, most of them will be tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Even for us, when we streamed our latest tournament on YouTube, which reached around 40 million people, the top two languages in which users accessed the content were Hindi and Tamil. We got three million views on our Hindi streams for PMPL and the views for English were less than 10 per cent of it,” Kedia quipped.
To keep this momentum of growth going, Kedia and his team are investing highly in technology like distributed broadcast architecture using cloud technology. “We will continue to experiment with AR, VR, and mixed reality. Another important goal for us is to minimise the number of people in our offices and we are working towards that.”
Kedia believes that esports has a great future in India and is also planning to invest in talent management going ahead. To popularise NODWIN, he is actively indulging in brand partnerships, sponsorships, and attending various events and webinars to reach out to potential trade partners.
