Paying to watch people play computer games may seem curious to some, but it is catching on not only in sporting arenas but also on the stock market and business world. While many financiers have been glued to the Rugby World Cup, London has also hosted the equally competitive, if less strenuous, League of Legends E-sports event last weekend. About 24,000 youngsters streamed in under a cold autumnal sky to Wembley, the home of English soccer, to see teams take each other on in a computer game.
Fans cheered as players lined up on opposing computer keyboards ready to wage virtual war, while in the background coaches prowled around in the manner of soccer's Jose Mourinho. Over the road, fans huddled outside the Wembley Hilton hotel for autographs of their favourite players.
E-sports is a generic term for events ranging from virtual warfare games to computer-simulated soccer matches, often played for big prize money.
Market research firm Superdata said the global E-sports audience stood at 134 million viewers and was growing, while organisers said 6,000 turned up each day to attend the four-day League of Legends tournament that ended on Sunday, with some paying nearly 30 pounds ($46) for a ticket.
Analysts and executives said this offered an array of lucrative opportunities, although it was still early days. The League of Legends event is run by Riot Games, a company in which Chinese online entertainment and media group Tencent Holdings owns a majority stake.
Whalen Rozelle, director of E-sports at Riot Games, said that while League of Legends was not yet profitable, the company was confident it would be.
"I absolutely foresee a day when the E-sports industry will be incredibly profitable. It will just take time," he said, speaking on the tournament sidelines.
Shares in Tencent are up about 30 percent since the start of 2015, while those in Activision Blizzard, which is also setting up an E-Sports tournament for its "Call of Duty" game, have hit record highs this year.
GFinity, which hosts E-sport events, floated on the London stock market last year and while its shares are not as actively traded, they are still nearly 50 percent above their debut flotation price of 17 pence.
Gary Paulin, co-founder at brokerage Aviate Global, said the E-sports trend could also give a lift to Logitech, by spurring sales of Logitech's joysticks, and Modern Times Group given Modern Times' acquisition of a stake in E-sport company Turtle Entertainment in July.
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