There are no signs of Valve releasing a sequel to Dota 2. The publisher has found a winning formula, and it would be silly to give up a good thing like this.
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2022 was another great year for esports. Viewership rose again, increasing from 489.5 million in 2021 to 532.1 million. Revenues for the industry also continued their upward trajectory, climbing to $1.384 billion from $1.136 billion the previous year.
This was just a continuation of the explosive growth of esports that we’ve witnessed over the last decade or so. Almost everyone connected to competitive video gaming believes that this trend will only continue for at least the next few years, with 2023 no exception. Of course, not all individual esports are experiencing growth at the same rates. Some are proving more popular than others, helping to turbocharge the expansion of the medium.
So which esports are set to thrive in 2023? Let’s take a look.
Poker is a game that sits with its feet in both the physical sports and esports worlds. The game is very similar, no matter whether it’s played online or in person, allowing professional players to enjoy success in both realms and switch back regularly.
The success of poker as an esport is the result of several factors that will continue to benefit it in the next year.
Firstly, it’s a sport that’s easy to get into. There are plenty of resources online that cover the basic rules of poker, such as each hand, their rankings, and how the betting rounds work. These tools allow beginners to quickly get up to speed with what they need to start playing.
But while simple to pick up the basics, poker offers a complex and strategic challenge for experienced players, ensuring they continue to enjoy competing years or even decades after they started.
And with the advent of online poker, it’s only become easier for them to try out and test different approaches that they can use in tournaments. This won’t change in 2023 and as more people get access to the digital form of the game, its popularity will continue to climb.
Dota 2 has maintained a spot as one of the most popular esports in the world for much of the last decade. The game was released in July 2013 and, although called Dota 2, it is the first standalone game to bear this name. Valve has enjoyed a lot of success with this game thanks to its open-ended gameplay, free-to-play model, and regular updates.
In 2022, Dota 2 esports events awarded more prize money to players than any other competition. With a prize pool of more than $32 million, it was head and shoulders above second place PUBG Mobile’s $24 million. It also had almost twice the number of peak viewers, attracting 1.75 million, compared to PUBG Mobile’s 903,000.
There are no signs of Valve releasing a sequel to Dota 2. The publisher has found a winning formula, and it would be silly to give up a good thing like this. Therefore, the game will continue to dominate the esports world in 2023.
While Dota 2 may have the biggest combined prize pools, League of Legends is the game that attracts the most viewers. In early November 2022, 5.1 million people tuned in to watch the final of the 2022 World Championship with a total of 141.9 million hours of gameplay being watched by fans over the week-long tournament.
Having been around even longer, League of Legends has established itself as one of the most-played video games ever created. Like with Dota 2, Riot Games, the publisher of League of Legends, has no immediate plans to create a sequel to the game. Instead, it will simply continue to push out a regular stream of updates for its players to download and purchase.
These updates keep the game fresh, providing a novel experience and a continued sense of progression. League of Legends events have slowly been finding their way onto traditional television networks too, which has helped to attract even more players and fans. With all that in mind, it’s clear that this game will continue to be one of the biggest esports right through 2023 and beyond.
