Technology
The Business of eSports
For decades, the world’s top athletes have competed in illustrious tournaments such as The Masters or the Tour de France.
People tune in from all over to see these athletes in peak form, and tournaments rake in cash from media rights, advertisements, sponsorships, merchandise, and also the live event itself. In turn, these competitions offer millions of dollars in prize pools for the participants.
But what if there was a new type of sport that upped the ante?
While sport purists might scoff at the idea of any type of competition involving video games – the numbers speak for themselves. The realm of eSports already has tournaments that pack stadiums, offering bigger prize pools than either the Tour de France or The Masters.
And soon, eSports will be a billion dollar business with a global audience of over 300 million fans.
The Booming Business of eSports
Today’s infographic comes to us from Moneypod, and it dives right into the interesting and possibly unfamiliar arena of eSports, which is seeing double-digit growth in all revenue categories from media rights to merchandise sales.
Gaming has always been popular, but the rise of eSports is something new.
The excitement around these competitions pairs the popularity of gaming with changing demographics, growing buying power for consumers in Asia (where the sport is the most popular), increased levels of connectivity, and new technological advancements.
Perhaps even more interesting is that the business of eSports is flourishing as a result – and with packed stadiums, deals with media giants like ESPN, double-digit revenue growth rates, and hundreds of millions of fans, it has been said that this is the year that eSports hits the mainstream.
Latest Market Projections
In the last few months, new market projections on the business of eSports have come out from NewZoo, a market intelligence company focused on games, eSports, and mobile.
Here are their latest projections for audience growth:
There are 215 million fans today, including 165 million hardcore enthusiasts. The majority of this group, about 53%, resides in the Asia-Pacific region.
Lastly, here is a breakdown of projected revenue streams for 2018:
Impressively, media rights is the fastest growing segment at 72.1% growth. The sponsorship segment isn’t far behind at a 53.2% growth rate.
In total, the market is expected to be worth $906 million this year, a solid 38.2% higher than in 2017. This expansion is not expected to stop anytime soon, and in 2019 eSports will be a market in excess of $1 billion in size – a figure that will surely put this emerging space in an even bigger spotlight.
Technology
Visualizing AI Patents by Country
See which countries have been granted the most AI patents each year, from 2012 to 2022.
Visualizing AI Patents by Country
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
This infographic shows the number of AI-related patents granted each year from 2010 to 2022 (latest data available). These figures come from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), accessed via Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index Report.
From this data, we can see that China first overtook the U.S. in 2013. Since then, the country has seen enormous growth in the number of AI patents granted each year.
Year | China | EU and UK | U.S. | RoW | Global Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2010 | 307 | 137 | 984 | 571 | 1,999 |
2011 | 516 | 129 | 980 | 581 | 2,206 |
2012 | 926 | 112 | 950 | 660 | 2,648 |
2013 | 1,035 | 91 | 970 | 627 | 2,723 |
2014 | 1,278 | 97 | 1,078 | 667 | 3,120 |
2015 | 1,721 | 110 | 1,135 | 539 | 3,505 |
2016 | 1,621 | 128 | 1,298 | 714 | 3,761 |
2017 | 2,428 | 144 | 1,489 | 1,075 | 5,136 |
2018 | 4,741 | 155 | 1,674 | 1,574 | 8,144 |
2019 | 9,530 | 322 | 3,211 | 2,720 | 15,783 |
2020 | 13,071 | 406 | 5,441 | 4,455 | 23,373 |
2021 | 21,907 | 623 | 8,219 | 7,519 | 38,268 |
2022 | 35,315 | 1,173 | 12,077 | 13,699 | 62,264 |
In 2022, China was granted more patents than every other country combined.
While this suggests that the country is very active in researching the field of artificial intelligence, it doesn’t necessarily mean that China is the farthest in terms of capability.
Key Facts About AI Patents
According to CSET, AI patents relate to mathematical relationships and algorithms, which are considered abstract ideas under patent law. They can also have different meaning, depending on where they are filed.
In the U.S., AI patenting is concentrated amongst large companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Google. On the other hand, AI patenting in China is more distributed across government organizations, universities, and tech firms (e.g. Tencent).
In terms of focus area, China’s patents are typically related to computer vision, a field of AI that enables computers and systems to interpret visual data and inputs. Meanwhile America’s efforts are more evenly distributed across research fields.
Learn More About AI From Visual Capitalist
If you want to see more data visualizations on artificial intelligence, check out this graphic that shows which job departments will be impacted by AI the most.
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