Esports is on a roll. The global esports market passed the $2bn mark last year and is expected to be worth nearly $11bn by 2032. Tournament prize money is rising and audiences on channels like Twitch are expected to top 640 million worldwide in 2025. IBC365 takes a closer look at the events shaking up the esports landscape.
In July 2024, the world took note as the IOC agreed to deliver an official Olympics Esports Games. Originally slated to take place in Saudi Arabia later this year, it was confirmed in February 2025 that the event was postponed and would instead run every two years between the Summer and Winter Olympics, starting in Riyadh in 2027. The Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF) was also unveiled as a founding partner of the event...
You are not signed in
Only registered users can read the rest of this article.
Innovation Awards: Investigating 2026’s Content Creation finalists
What does it take to win a technological innovation award in Content Creation? Fergal Ringrose, Chair of Judges for the IBC Innovation Awards, assesses the top three projects in the running – revealing the key characteristics of each of the most competitive submissions.
Branded entertainment: Money, freedom, and audiences unite
As traditional broadcasters battle decreasing budgets and attention spans, brands have come to the fore as collaborators in an increasingly lucrative and creatively fertile strand of the media business.
FRAMES: Automating the archive end-to-end
Despite the availability of hundreds of generative AI tools, pre-production environments are still struggling to find a semantic archive search solution that is technically feasible and effective in the real world. Enter FRAMES.
IBC Accelerator: Scaling the future of immersive festival experiences
Stepping beyond the screen, this IBC Accelerator project has set out to meld immersive technology and audience interaction into an entirely new form of audience engagement.
Content Everywhere: From AI promise to commercial reality
If IBC2025 was defined by conversations about artificial intelligence’s transformative potential, the past 12 months have been about proving where it can deliver tangible business value. CE exhibitors now describe a market that has become more pragmatic.

