Mobile eSports, a niche market within the rapidly growing competitive gaming industry, has seen positive development in the past couple of months.
Besides trying to establish itself as a potential successful market and seeing some important market participants joining in, another important piece to the puzzle emerged recently – a cross-platform eSports tournament management system.
Skillz, a company specializing in real-money mobile gaming competitions, recently announced the launch of its cross-platform multiplayer system tailored for mobile games. This will allow Android and iOS users to compete directly against each other on the company’s daily eSports platform, which offers thousands of tournaments.
Several Android and iOS games are already supported by Skillz, where players can enter various tournaments, including some with real cash. However, the lack of cross-platform competition has split the mobile player base.
Uniting eSports audience across multiple platforms will be key
While the company competes for business with other startups like Cashplay, another company that offers mobile game tournaments for real-money eSports players on mobile devices, this platform could help Skillz to unify the competitive audience across multiple mobile platforms and rapidly increase their client base.
“As eSports achieve mainstream adoption, multiplayer competitions should be accessible to all 2.1 billion mobile gamers worldwide,” said Andrew Paradise, founder and CEO of Skillz. “Just like the AFL – NFL merger in 1966, or the ABA - NBA merger in 1976, we are unifying the competitive ecosystems of the two most popular mobile eSports platforms. This is a seminal moment in the future of sports.”
The company already has a huge client base with 7 million players and 1,100 studio partners. In 2015, Skillz claimed it paid out $16 million in earnings to its players, which is an immense amount for such a young industry. Additionally, eSports tournaments paid out approximately $64 million in prizes in 2015, according to esportsearnings.com, a website that tracks the industry.
The growing industry of competitive gaming is coming closer and closer to the stage where it can be compared to traditional sports like baseball and basketball.
For example, the most popular eSports competition in 2015 drew over 36 million spectators, more than twice as many as the final game of the 2015 MLB World Series. Seeing this development, some big names from traditional sports have already shown interest in the electronic sports environment and if the popularity and growth rate is maintained, we will definitely see many more getting in on the action in the future.
