Esports Data

What Is Esports Data?

Esports refers to video game tournaments and matches played by teams and streamed online in real time. Esports data, therefore, refers to all the data about matches, tournaments, teams, players, and viewers. Additional data include game developers, game type, and advertisers or sponsors.

The video games played competitively in these tournaments tend to be shooters like Call of Duty, sports titles like FIFA, and battle royale games like Street Fighter.

Where Does Esports Data Come From?

Most esports data comes from streaming sites and tournament organizers. Teams also publish data for their own use and for fans.

In addition, more and more data analytics companies have begun entering the industry to gather and disseminate esports data.

What Types of Columns/Attributes Should I Expect When Working with This Data?

The main attributes of this data include viewership numbers (usually live), player and team statistics, and match or tournament results.

What Is Esports Data Used For?

Fans use this data for a variety of purposes. In addition to discussing the game or their favorite teams and players with friends, they place bets. In fact, these bets are huge drivers of industry activity and bring in a lot of interest from data providers and advertisers.

Speaking of advertisers, they use this data to make decisions on investing in sponsorships or placing ads of their own during playing hours.

Developers also use this data to improve their game quality of guide the development of games they are currently working on.

How Should I Test the Quality of This Data?

One of the challenges of this data is that there are no central organizational authorities: thus, common tournament organizers have no requirement to issue specific data in a specific format. Data analysts creating their own esports dataset, therefore, must pay close attention to standardization and cleanliness of their data.

In addition, fans expect immediate updates and analysis, so developers must provide the information with as little latency as possible.

Interesting Case Studies and Blogs to Look Into

Intel: How Do You Play a Perfect Game? Modern Esports Is Turning to Big Data to Find the Answers
Bayes Esports: How to Create Value out of Esports Data

Tangible Examples of Impact

Esports Insider says: SAP’s push into esports analytics has been interesting, but this alliance appears to focus more on the firm’s bread and butter: business management and analytics tools for all kinds of companies. This continues to highlight the growth of esports organisations as global businesses, not just esports entities.

Esports Insider: Team Vitality taps SAP for business development solutions