A new report released by Newzoo for the month of October highlights a substantial overlap in traditional sports viewers and esports audiences. What's more, 76 percent of esports enthusiasts state the time they spend watching esports is taking away from the time they used to spend watching traditional sports.
In the report, Newzoo outlines that in the United States, 110.2M people watch football frequently, and 8.7M watch esports and football. For basketball, it's 79.9M frequent viewers with a crossover of 9.6M, while baseball sits at 43.1M viewers with 6.6M who watch both baseball and esports.
Additionally, 15 percent of all millennials 21-35 years old watch esports. This places it right behind ice hockey (roughly 16 percent) and baseball (just shy of 20 percent) within that demographic. Millennial males 21-35 specifically that watch esports sit at 22 percent, which overtakes ice hockey and nearly passes baseball.
Esports has recently seen a major boom in high profile investors over the last year, with the NBA and a field of personalities investing. Jonas Jerebko of the Boston Celtics, Rick Fox, Shaquille O'Neil, the Philadelphia 76ers, and part-owner of the Golden State Warriors Peter Guber have all jumped in.
You can download the report here.