North America has been trailing behind Asia and Europe for quite some time now. With the demise of many large scale LAN events, the death of many leagues, teams and sponsors backing out of North American E-Sports; things are not looking good. However the question is not ‘Is North...

North America has been trailing behind Asia and Europe for quite some time now. With the demise of many large scale LAN events, the death of many leagues, teams and sponsors backing out of North American E-Sports; things are not looking good.

However the question is not ‘Is North America behind the rest?’ it is ‘Why is North America behind the rest?’. There is no question that we are facing depressing times, especially in the E-Sports industry, but why is North America so much worse off than other parts of the world in the E-Sports industry?

North American E-Sports is behind the rest because of the way it is setup compared to Europe and Asia. In terms of Internet infrastructure, population density, targeted demographics, game selections, and the level of maturity and professionalism within top tier E-Sports organizations.

With Europe, their population density is much higher than North Americas. As well, with so many countries and competing languages, opportunities for leagues such as the ENC are actually possible. This combined with their internet infrastructure makes it so these leagues and teams are possible. People from Sweden can easily play people from Italy with little latency issues.

This combined with fewer supported games allows for the supported games to bring in more stable amounts of money. Organizations are actually able to maintain a professionally run organization, they can hire a team without having to worry about whether as soon as this season of ‘insert league here’ is over, will they have to drop the team because the game they specialize in is no longer played. Teams are able to develop brands, work alongside their teams for a lengthy period of time enabling them to build something tangible.

In Asia, the Internet infrastructure is poor in most cases, however the population density and lower cost of living cancels that out. In China specifically, most families cannot afford a computer and all of the peripherals to accompany it; this forces kids to attend their local LAN centers to compete with other kids. This makes ideal situations for sponsors looking for a stable environment at a low cost to them. With the lower cost of living, the sponsors don’t need to shell out as much money to teams and events to entice kids to come out. As well, peripheral manufacturers such as Steel Series can still market and sell their products to these kids under the reasoning that, the kids won’t have to spend thousands of dollars over the years (computer, computer upgrades, good internet, etc.) they can just spend a little money one time for peripherals of their preference and still compete regularly.

This combined with the amount of people, and the technology boom in Asia makes it the perfect breeding ground for something like E-Sports. The current demographic in Asia is a technological consumer sort. With most youth buying and using the latest technology, gaming is right there with it; offering a new medium of advertising to these techno-hungry kids.

Another large reason as to why Korea and China are so powerful in E-Sports (SC and Wc3) is because of the way it is setup in terms of game selection. Not only is their population density ideal, but they don’t have 10 different games to worry about marketing through. They have one game, with that one game; they hit the majority of their E-Sports scenes. In Korea and China, you don’t have to worry about which event to support, because you won’t have to choose between a Wc3, SC, Quake, CS, CSS, COD, etc. You have one game, SC for Korea and Wc3 in China.

Last but not least, in Asia –Korea especially- the way team organizations are run is professional. Teams do not rely on sponsorships to fund them, the teams are actual corporations themselves; self sustaining teams. Teams aren’t reliant on sponsors to help out, as well, they aren’t struggling to please sponsors or worried about losing that all important paycheck as they provide it themselves.

In North America however, the Internet infrastructure is terrible. Teams from the East coast can’t compete fairly against teams from the West coast. On top of that, the population density is terrible; this combined with a poor demographic makes PC based E-Sports a nightmare in North America. Most people think kids who use a computer to play games are the stereotypical nerd that lives in his mother or grandmothers basement. It is not socially acceptable to play video games unless it is a console, which is why the only stable organization of sorts is on the console side of things with the MLG.

Not only is the mainstream acceptance of North America E-Sports poor, but so is North American E-Sports itself. With the lack of professionalism from organizations hitting an all time high in the past 3 years, we have also seen the demise of all major events (CPL, WSVG, Digital Life, CAL, CGS, etc.) and lo and behold, the same people were behind most of those events. As well the team organizations are run poorly in terms of what they offer and how they are managed. When problems arise they throw money at them instead of good management. Game selections come into play here quite a bit as well; games constantly go in and out of style each month. Teams then do not do the proper research on the market and invest in a so called ‘popular teams’ and are stuck with these kids on a 6 month contract, when their game is already dead 2 months into the contract.

Organizations also do not take the time to invest more than money into their teams and their scene. The notion of hiring mercenaries is very popular in America with teams hiring the ‘best’ team and then letting them do whatever they feel like. The teams don’t market the players or help develop them or their scene and are then left twiddling their thumbs wondering what just happened and why are they stuck with a crappy team for 4 more months which isn’t even earning money.

Obviously each area has its own set of situations that makes E-Sports as successful as it is in those areas. It seems after being dealt the wrong cards over and over and over again North America finally has a chance to fix things.