Impact: The camel in the tent not mentioned in Activision Blizzard’s announcement is the upcoming team-based shooter, Overwatch. There is plenty of consumer anticipation for the title, especially with a closed beta soon to start, which would make the product a natural to lead Activision Blizzard’s new esports ambitions. That Overwatch was not mentioned likely is due to internal timelines at Blizzard. In an interview with the International Business Times, Blizzard senior esports manager Kim Phan said that the Overwatch team was definitely engaged with esports options but that those efforts were taking a back seat to the priority of launching the game. No doubt Overwatch will play a major role in Activision Blizzard’s aggressive new push into esports, but it is obvious the company does not intend to wait for the title, not when this is a direction the firm has been telegraphing since earlier this year when it started talking up esports for the launch of Heroes of the Storm. However, the hiring of Bornstein and Sepso shows they are really serious about this space.
It should be noted that esports has been around for some time but has gotten an extraordinary amount of hype in the past year with Amazon and Google both going after Twitch. Despite this, the long-term profitability of esports is still debatable. To really make money in esports you need large numbers of eyeballs to drive ad revenues for all involved. Endorsements and related promotional deals are nice but they don’t always result in big money by themselves. It seems Activision is playing on the current momentum and taking a reasonably big stake in esports given the segment is garnering so much publicity and mindshare in the games industry. Thanks to the competitive depth of Blizzard’s franchises, there is good potential for this new esports division. At the same time there is also risk considering the huge competition from Riot, Valve and all of the other players.