Number of amateur e-sports players grows by 2.2 million

Around 16 million Germans have already watched eSports tournaments and around ten million have even played themselves. According to a YouGov survey commissioned by game, the awareness and popularity of eSports continues to grow.

The YouGov survey was conducted on behalf of the German association game at the end of July and beginning of August and is representative of the German population aged 16 and over. The association usually asks about various topics, but not all, so there are no new results every year. In the case of eSports, the last survey was conducted in 2020, but a lot has happened since then, as these results show.

The proportion of Germans who have heard of e-sports has risen by six percentage points to 77 percent. This compares to 65 per cent in 2018 and 55 per cent in 2017. 23 percent of all Germans aged 16 and over, or around 16 million people, have watched an eSports tournament. According to the association, this figure has risen by around four million, although the trend has of course been continuing for some time. As expected, the number of spectators is strongly age-dependent. While the figure for the under-34s is approaching 50 per cent, less than ten per cent of the over-55s have ever watched an eSports tournament.