According to market research firm iResearch, China's
e-sports gamers numbered 117 million (in Chinese) in 2016, with the market size reaching RMB 40 billion.
and yet
e-sport gamers are treated like celebrities there, and has one of the biggest
game company owners in the world (League of Legends among many, many other big online
games are owned by Tencent, and is a major stockholder of Epic
Games, Activision Blizzard, etc) and a huge
numbers of PC Master Race, so huge Valve decided to make an exclusive Dota server just for 1 country alone.
According to Dr. Alamo, the draw of video
games has already led a
number of casinos in Las Vegas to look into introducing betting opportunities on
e-sports — competitive online video
game tournaments — as early as in the next few months.