Published todayEsports Digital Overview 2022the annual report of IDEA – sector association representing the video game industry in Italy – which takes stock of the situation on the eSporting world in the Bel Paese. The study was conducted in collaboration with Nielsenwhich analyzed the events, channels and behavior of export fans in Italy.
The results are very encouraging, as he confirms Marco Saletta, President of IIDEA:
“Today in our country over 1,630,000 people follow an esports event several times a week. However, this data, which testifies to how competitive gaming is to be counted among the entertainment activities preferred by Italians, alone is not enough to analyze and interpret the phenomenon correctly and lay the strategic foundations for further growth in the sector. As an Association we have therefore intercepted this need and carried out in collaboration with Nielsen a targeted analysis on the habits of use of esports by fans and an in-depth analysis of their digital identikit with the aim of providing operators with a privileged point of view “.
Esports Digital Overview 2022: the data of the IIDEA report
The study reveals a marked difference between the trends in vogue in Italy on Twitch and YouTube, the two main platforms that host export content. The research – which is based on the performance data of the first 10 thousand Italian-language channels identified for hours watched by users in 2019, 2020 and 2021 on Twitch and YouTube – confirms that the growth trend recorded for Twitch in 2020 was also confirmed in 2021. The same cannot be said for YouTube But, in which a decline was observed compared to the results obtained during the pandemic. The values recorded by Twitch for total hours watched, total views and total airtime are significantly higher than those of YouTube. The difference between the two platforms is manifested both in terms of content creation and use of the same.
More generally, the overview confirms that the digital use of the events broadcast in Italian continued to grow also in 2021. An important figure, given that the increase in terms of hours watched is 92% for national events and 52% for international ones.
No surprise instead for the titles. The most popular competitions are in fact those of League of Legends by Riot Games. However, none of the games featured in Twitch’s top 3 are on the YouTube podium. A figure that underlines the trend gap between the two platforms. On both platforms, the first game (Call of Duty Warzone per Twitch e Rocket League per YouTube) does not reach 11% in terms of share on the other.