Tribe of e-sports players is burgeoning as games become real career option

They also provide an identity and a sense of belonging

Sultana is not her real name, but it is the one she identifies with. She came to Delhi four years ago from Ernakulam, Kerala, escaping from her parents’ pressure to “settle down”.

“I came to Delhi for a tournament and never left. My winnings got me into a PG (paying guest accommodation) and helped me earn a diploma in public relations,” she says.
 

Sultana now lives in South Delhi and works in advertising. And she writes Sultana as $ult4n4. It is her e-sport alter ego. The tournament for which she came to Delhi was an e-sport event.
 

Since then, she has participated in several e-sport tournaments, with names that sound typically violent, and is looked upon — or so she thinks — as “the maker of peace, the singer of lullabies, the silent terror herself”.
 

That hyperbole is not unique to $ult4n4. Nor is gaming as a career, a livelihood, and a provider of identity and self-esteem. “My gaming identity has given me everything I have in life today,” says the 36-year-old. “This community of gamers is my 

only family.”
 

Her tribe is burgeoning.
 

Windows of Opportunity, a report by EY and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), says the number of e-sports players in India increased from 600,000 in 2021 to 1 million in 2022, and is expected to reach 2.5 million in 2023. The number of e-sports teams, the most common way of participating in tournaments, grew by 10 per cent to 110,000 in 2022, and is estimated to reach 125,000 this year.
 

E-sport is an advanced stage of gaming. It has winners and losers, but there is no betting and the players do not need to pay anything to the organisers.
 

“This means the sector does not fall within the purview of the recently announced 28 per cent GST (goods and services tax) on online gaming,” says Shiva Nandy, founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Skyesports Masters, one of India’s biggest franchised e-sports leagues with a prize pool of Rs. 2 crore.
 

There are two main sources of revenue for tournament organisers — brand deals and media rights. For the players, there is the prize money, and they get salaries from their teams.
 

Vatsal Uniyal of Global Esports says top professional e-sports players earn anything from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 8,00,000 a month. Tournament prize pools run into millions of dollars and are increasing every year.
 

Naturally, players approach e-sports as any other professional career.
 

“Players train for 8 to 12 hours every day, six days a week, in the months leading up to a major tournament. This involves activities such as team practices, individual skill development, strategy review, and physical and mental conditioning,” says Uniyal.
 

It takes skill and persistence to reach the top level. Most aspiring professionals start out competing in small tournaments for prizes of Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000 as they hone their skills and work to join a professional organisation.
 

Skyesports Masters, for instance, had grassroots-level qualifiers in 20 cities to scout for players at the lowest level. Top players from there were signed up for the Masters. E-sports trainers and coaches, too, have proliferated.
 

The players invest in themselves, as other career professionals do — $ult4n4 has spent nearly Rs. 2 lakh on the gaming den in her home — but the mention of paying a fee for participation meets with lofty responses from the community.
 

“You would not ask a Virat Kohli or a Rohit Sharma (two of India’s best-known cricket players) to pay a fee just to participate in a game, would you? Nor would that entry amount decide how much they earn at the end of the game. That is the central difference between e-gaming and e-sports,” says Gautam Virk, co-founder and Co-CEO of NODWIN Gaming, the organiser of a 25-day e-sport tournament in Delhi’s Chhatarpur that started on August 4 and has drawn 119 players divided into 24 teams.
 

Skyesports Masters will culminate into a finale at the Koramangala Indoor Stadium, Bengaluru, on August 26 and 27. The leading e-sport tournament organisers, such as Skyesports, The Esports Club, Upthrust Esports, and Villager Esports, might have as many as eight tournaments listed in a single calendar year, not to mention several one-off or limited series tournaments listed by other organisers.
 

Now comes legitimacy. The International Olympic Committee, the Olympic Council of Asia and the Commonwealth Games have recognised e-sports as a “sport” category. E-sports will debut as a medal sport in the Asian Games 2023.
 

This legitimacy seems to be washing away the residue of government action last year (see: Impact of bans) citing security issues. India banned Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), developed and distributed by South Korea-based Krafton, in July 2022. Before BGMI, Krafton’s PUBG Mobile, quite popular, had got banned.
 

BGMI returned in May this year.
 

With the rise of the community and the accompanying legitimacy, media recognition was inevitable. The Chhatarpur tournament, the second instalment of the BGMI Masters Series, is being broadcast on Star Sports.
 

The EY-Ficci report says the airtime across all competitive-level games in India grew by almost 50 per cent from 3,100 broadcast hours in 2021 to 4,500 in 2022, and is estimated to rise to 6,000 hours in 2023. Broadcasting platforms for e-sports in India increased from 13 in 2021 to 14 in 2022.
 

Meanwhile, the number of brands investing in e-sports in India grew from 72 in 2021 to 80 in 2022 and is estimated to reach 100 in 2023.
 

Perhaps a time will come when more people will flaunt names with $ and digits in them.