Every year digital media and entertainment accounts for an ever greater part of revenues for the global entertainment and media industry. This is driven by the relatively new high-growth entertainment sectors such as E-sports, subscription-based audio, video services and virtual reality. As of 2019, 55% of global entertainment and media revenues were digital, and this is expected to rise to 62% by 2023.1 Within the digital entertainment space, virtual reality is expected to show the strongest growth, while traditional methods of entertainment are expected to drop over the next few years. E-sports is another promising area within gaming, which is watched by millions of fans all over the world. The number of people viewing these E-sport events globally often exceeds that of a large traditional sport event such as the NBA (basketball) finals.2
The growth of the E-sports industry has been driven by the so-called Generation Z. According to BofA Merrill Lynch, more than 60% of E-sports viewers are under the age of 24. We believe that the potential for E-sports-driven growth is greater in emerging markets (EM) countries than in the developed world because the population in EM is younger and this bodes well for sustained long-term growth for the E-sports industry in the region.
In this report we focus on the future landscape for digital entertainment and undertake our own research to understand how the different countries within EM vary within this space. China and Taiwan stand out as the top two counties based on attractiveness of their respective future entertainment industries. We expect digital entertainment to accelerate in EM as technology and country demographics drive the force behind this new trend.