Electronic sports, or "Esports" as it is shortened, has become big business. According to market researchers at Newzoo, the Esports industry will reach $905 million in revenue this year, a gain of 38% from 2017, and subsequently top $1 billion in 2019.
Ben Payne, Director of Esports at the vaunted racing brand McLaren, sees virtual racing as the next breakout genre for the industry and is wasting no time establishing his company as a leader in the virtual racing space. A new series on ESPN is featuring the company and detailing how McLaren took to the global gaming community to find its 2018 simulator driver champion.
Titled, "World's Fastest Gamer," the four-part series is a collaboration between ESPN and Toronto-based mobile gaming publisher Millennial Esports (TSX-V:GAME)(OTCQB:MLLLF). The series, divided into four 30-minutes shows, is scheduled to air back-to-back (to-back-to-back) on ESPN2 and streaming on the ESPN app starting at 7 AM EDT between live Practice 3 and live Qualifying for the Belgium Grand Prix on Saturday, August 25.
The shows will also be rebroadcast several times throughout the remainder of the Formula 1 season.
In order to discover its 2018 simulator driver, McLaren and Millennial Esports began whittling down potential winners in May from tens of thousands of online gamers competing for the title. Ultimately, 12 were brought into McLaren's Formula 1 facility in the United Kingdom in November for a week of head-to-head competition for the title and a contract with McLaren.
In the finals, two contestants had to show their mettle and racing skills during a four-hour assessment on McLaren's state-of-the-art simulator, the same one that its F1 drivers use. Rudy van Buren, a 25-year-old sales manager from Lelystad in the Netherlands and former Dutch karting champion, emerged as the winner, crowned the world's best virtual driver.
Payne said more than 10 million people viewed the competition, demonstrating "the real value of Esports within F1."
"I hope that young American racing fans are inspired by seeing how accessible Esports makes racing and motivates them to get closer to our amazing sport in both the virtual and real worlds," said Darren Cox, CMO of Millennial Esports and creator of World's Fastest Gamer, in a press release this morning.
GAME CEO Steve Shoemaker says the company is already deep into the process to confirm another season of World's Fastest Gamer, which is expected to be even more challenging and have even bigger prizes.
There has been nothing virtual about the beatdown shares of GAME have suffered in 2018.
Trading near 90 cents at the start of January, shares skidded to as low as 10.5 cents in June. Ahead of Wednesday's news of the ESPN show, shares gained 4.0% to close at 13 cents on Tuesday. U.S.-listed shares gathered 0.5% to wrap the day up at 10.06 cents.
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