Esports and the Law

Esports refers to elite level competitive video gaming, often in the form of professional events (league competitions, tournaments, championships or battle/match) and typically between contracted gamers and/or sponsored teams. In the past 20 years or so, esports’ business model has developed rapidly from one initially based on community tournament organisers and individual game publishers to the contemporary multi-stakeholder industry. While the ecosystem has recently experienced a post-COVID “esports winter” where financial models broke down and self-sustainability became an issue for many stakeholders, the esports scene continues to evolve and is projected to have a market volume of US$5.9bn by 2029and a global fan base of around 900 million in the same year.