China’s Invictus are the “League of Legends” World Champion

China’s Invictus Gaming trashed its European rival Fnatic 3-0 taking home the Silver Summoner’s Cup and over $840,000 in prize money with a global audience of over 200m tuned to watch the final, according to Chinese streaming companies.

The rise of esports in China has been more dramatic than anywhere else in the world, as until 2015 video games consoles were banned by a government that remains uneasy about the effect of screentime on the development of children and this year no new game has been licensed for commercialisation sicne March.

Despite all this money poured into Chinese esports, and the country now has critical influence in the market with Tencent the largest video games company, expects China to have 60 per cent of the world’s players in two years.

Esports will generate $906m in revenue globally this year  and 35 per cent annual growth and a revenue figure of $2.96bn 2022 according Goldman Sachs projections.

Sponsopship for esports teams and sales of streaming rights, advertising revenues and ticket sales for tournaments are peaking.

The main winners from esports have been game developers, for which China is their biggest market which generated $30bn sales last year.

“Our optimism and support for esports is long term” Ren Yuxin, Tencent’s COO. Tencent invested $1.1bn into Douyu and Huya, the Chinese game streaming platforms.

Huya claims 91m monthly active users and listed on Nasdaq this year, raising $180m and generated revenues of $156m in the past quarter with modest profit of $16m.

China is home to over a dozen professional esports teams and most team owners are the children of property developers.

Wang Sicong, son of Wang Jianlin, China’s fifth richest man, has invested millions into Invictus Team OMG has sponsorship deals with Mercedes-Benz, Red Bull and Bright Food one of China’s largest consumer companies.

EDG, sponsored by Gillette, raised $16m this year in a venture capital round.

Alibaba is also betting on esports tournaments  as its Alisports subsidiary holds an annual tournament with a $5.5m prize purse that attracted nearly 20, 000 players this year mostly in China.

More than half of world’s esports fans are in Asia as US and China lead global esports revenues,  with China $163.1m, followed by North America $344.3m and the Rest of the world $344.3m. Mobile esports are driving games sales in China.