This article is reprinted with permission by the author.
The number of eSports tournaments in North America grew by nearly 10,000 competitions in 2012, and then added more than 15,000 in 2013. According to BattleFy, one of the major eSports platforms, this number is expected to reach nearly 50,000 tournaments by the end of 2014. BattleFy is a Vancouver-based company developing an eSports management platform with the same name as the firm. The organization was co-founded by Jason Xu, a former eSports tournament organizer and competitive Starcraft player, in 2012.
League of Legends, Dota 2, FIFA, Stacraft2 and Pokemon were the top five most played franchises in North American eSports tournaments in 2013. The top ten franchises attracted more than a million participants, according to statistics collected by Battlefly.
According to CEO Jason Xu:
“The eSports community is growing exponentially, If League of Legends remains popular, that franchise could attract a million participants in 2015.”
Key findings to report:
The number of tournaments in North America has significantly increased since the birth of eSports in 2011. This leads experts to believe that eSports will be the go-to market in the new digital age.
The majority of tournaments have no more than 32 players. Over the four year period, 94% of competitions had between 8 and 32 players. Only 5.65% of tournaments had more than 32 contestants (equal to or less than 128 entrants), while .44% of tournaments had more than 128 participants. These tournaments range from various different genres, platforms, and companies. The top ten franchises, shown below, resonate with experts’ hypotheses because they attracted more than a million players in 2013.
| Game | Tournaments | Players |
| League of Legends | 7,565 | 578,730 |
| Dota 2 | 5,012 | 329,090 |
| FIFA (Series) | 4,919 | 68,604 |
| Pokémon (Total franchise) | 3,604 | 50,403 |
| Starcraft 2 | 3,104 | 39,067 |
| Call of Duty (Series) | 2,263 | 63,988 |
| Counter-Strike | 1,411 | 68,155 |
| Street Fighter (Series) | 656 | 9,456 |
| Battlefield (Series) | 226 | 13,146 |
| World of Tanks | 195 | 14,448 |
| Total | 28,955 | 1,233,087 |
It must be noted here that the total number of players competing in a tournament is estimated at 1.2 million. For every player that enters, there is an even larger following of fans, journalists, sponsors, and affiliates involved. This number is suggested to increase in 2015, because of major companies like Amazon acquiring Twitch, ESPN streaming the Dota 2 International, and the rise of professionalism in the eSport scene.
Another interesting piece data to note is the number of college students who have competed in a tournament. A staggering 87% of college students have competed in 1-2 tournaments, according to Battlefy. Which leads me to ask: are the majority of the more competitive players older or not in college?
Many tournaments are already implementing the Battlefy platform, include Riot’s North American Collegiate Open, Ubisoft’s Might & Magic DoC Road2Paris Championships, the American Open Qualifier for The Summit, the Gottacon LoL Championships, Dota Peru Championships, North American Dota SECS, High School StarLeague, and Razer’s LoL Clash.
Battlefy has collected this information to get a better understanding of its user base and the North American eSports community, in order to tailor the Battlefy platform to serve the needs of the eSports public. Recently, Battlefy partnered with Riot Games to release “Tournament Codes” for League of Legends, a feature that automates many of the steps necessary to run a competition for the popular title.
