Evolution 2017 Fighting Game Tournament And eSports Betting

Evolution 2017 Fighting Game Tournament And eSports BettingIt’s no longer a matter for debate: the Evolution Championship Series has proven that fighting games are on the come-up in the world of eSports. The gambling world is certainly taking notice.

Leading industry analysts like Newzoo and Eilers predict will be a multi-billion-dollar eSports industry by 2019, and in 2016 Las Vegas casino operator Fifth Street Gaming became the first brick-and-mortar entity to get involved in a big way. The firm created a year-round eSports lounge at its Downtown Grand Casino where gamers could enter eSports contests as easily as poker players buy into a hand of cards.

The experiment, aimed at attracting the coveted millennial audience for which slots and other games of chance hold little broad appeal, turned out to be a huge success for Fifth Street, so the Downtown Grand took things a step further. Fifth Street offered gamblers the chance to place bets on the that year’s running of Evolution (EVO), widely acknowledged as the biggest and most prestigious fighting game tournament in the world, right off the casino floor. In so doing the firm became the first in Vegas to take bets on virtual fights the same as Vegas gamblers have been betting on real life pugilistic contests for decades.

EVO 2017’s Huge Turnouts Prove Value of Fighting Genre to eSports Bettors

Attendance at EVO 2017 was in excess of 10,000 over the course of the 21st edition the tournament, which ran from July 14 – 16, and for the second year running tournament organizers secured Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay resort as the venue. Overall tournament registration numbers were down somewhat from last year, in large part due to the huge hype surrounding the long-awaited release of Capcom’s Street Fighter V fizzling out since its debut.

The 2016 Street Fighter tournament boasted a record-crushing 5,102 entrants, which fell to 2,622 in 2017, but the seventh iteration of Bandai-Namco’s Tekken franchise – buoyed by a console release in June – saw a huge increase in participation, rising from 550 last year to 1,278 this time around. Winners of the Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 tournaments, came away with prizes greater than $50,000 apiece, and bettors may have fared almost as well if they’d been brave enough. Hajime Taniguchi, the winner in the Street Fighter tourney, was pegged with 11/1 odds by Bet365.com – pretty good, but not as good as the 16/1 odds laid on eventual third place finisher Naoki Nakayama.

Further confirmation of the fighting genre’s rise in prominence came from none other than ESPN2, as the network once again aired a live broadcast the Street Fighter V tournament finals. Total viewership numbers for the 2017 broadcast, like the numbers of contestants in the tournament itself, were down from 2016, when 201,000 viewers tuned in to watch. A peak figure of approximately 180,000 watched the 2017 final match between Taniguchi and American Victor Woodley, who came into the tournament rated 3/1 by oddsmakers.

Fighting games have, in general, proven to be a solid venture for ESPN in the past year or so, with 9 out of 10 of its most popular eSports broadcasts featuring Street Fighter titles. This could be a leading indicator that fighting games are starting to beat out stalwarts like FIFA soccer video games and Madden football video games when it comes to eSports on television.

ESports Influence on Future Fighting Game Design

Just as eSports organizers and those who bet on eSports are paying attention to fighting games, developers working in the genre are paying attention to feedback from eSports. One of the big reveals to come out of EVO 2017 was a side tournament featuring a new title from Japanese studio Arc System Works based on the long-running and globally popular Dragon Ball Z series of comics and television shows. The game is a 3-on-3 tag-team battler and looks to meld the anime franchise’s high-flying action with solid and time-tested fighting game mechanics, a combination that should make it a smashing success for the developer.

Dragon Ball FighterZ producer Hiroki Tomomi told attendees that the upcoming game returned the series back to its two-dimensional roots after a brief foray into 3D environments in recent years. Tomomi said the rising popularity of fighting games within eSports played a major role in the decision to go back to 2D for his new game. He explained that the development team’s goal was to craft an experience that was easy for players – and especially for viewers – to take in visually in a tournament or even a broadcast environment.

Could Fighting Games be the Future of eSports?

It was reported by researchers in 2016 that as many if not more than 1 million eSports betters wagering real money online during the previous year, and that number is likely to see yearly increases thanks to more exposure for eSports generally and events like EVO 2017 in particular. Asia accounts for 61 percent of global eSports gambling, but America is not far behind, with a reported 23 percent of activity in the sector.

BestUSASportsbooks.com thinks fighting games, with their easy-to-grasp concept (two players face off with the aim of laying a smackdown on their opponent, just like in a real world fight, except sometimes with fireballs and electric-powered punches), might just be the next big thing in eSports for mass consumption. The excitement generated by a flashy battle between superhuman martial arts masters should help make fighting games popular choices for big money eSports and betting on eSports for years to come.

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