In a little over 20 years, Esports has become a billion-dollar industry. Sponsors into Esports have grown year after year which has injected a lot of money into the Esports ecosystem. In Korea, pro players are seen as celebrities and Esports has not slowed down due to the pandemic. More people are playing video games than ever before. Just try to buy the latest Play Station or Xbox console….you can’t because they are all sold out. With so much interest in Esports, it is no wonder there is now a daily fantasy for Esports Fans called XP Fantasy.
Esports viewership has risen in popularity over the past 20 years. It is now estimated that the total global fan base of Esports will hit 650 million fans by 2023. In 2019, the League of Legends World Championship set a world record by having close to 4 million peak viewers. That was beaten this year at the 2021 Free Fire World Series, a Garena Free Fire tournament in Singapore that had over 5.4 million peak viewers. In the U.S. alone, Esports is the 2nd most-watched sport behind NFL. Therefore it is surprising that daily fantasy sports for Esports have not yet taken off as it has for sports such as NFL, NBA, and MLB.
Daily fantasy is a way for traditional sports fans to be more engaged with a team or particular players. Fans can draft a lineup of professional players. Based on how well these players do, the fans will get score points, and based on these points they move up in rankings. It has been proven that fantasy sports have attracted more viewers to the sport because they are more eager to tune in to games to see how well their players are performing. Based on their fantasy lineup’s in-game performance, users are ranked against one another with prizes awarded to users with the highest-performing lineup.
Currently, the two biggest daily fantasy sports platforms are FanDuel and DraftKings. FanDuel was able to raise $1.2 million for their Series A round back in 2009. Then $4 million for their Series B round in 2011, and $11 million for their Series C round. DraftKings had a much greater backing with $9.8 million for their series A round in 2013. This was followed by a $24 million Series B round towards the end of 2013. Both companies had a massive 2014 with FanDuel raising $70 million for their Series D round and DraftKings raised $41 million for their Series C round. In 2015 FanDuel raised an additional $275 million while DraftKings raised $300 million. Therefore, in 2015 both companies were now unicorn starts worth a combined $2.2 billion.
FanDuel and DraftKings are mainly focused on the big three sports of NFL, NBA, and MLB. They offered nothing in regard to daily fantasy for Esports. XP Fantasy is a daily fantasy Esports website for fans all around the world. Those that do not want to gamble but still want to win prizes. This is perfect for most Esports fans as many are under the age of 21.
Similar to daily fantasy sports, users can draft their teams by selecting from a wide range of Esports pro gamers. Based on how well they do during their in-game performance, they can win prizes.
XP Fantasy offers a subscription-based fantasy Esports platform that allows users to enter more contests at a reduced cost. On XP Fantasy, users can win esports-specific prizes instead such as gaming gear, team merch, and live coaching sessions.
XP Fantasy placed in the top 10 for the K-Startup Grand Challenge. The K-Startup Grand Challenge is a startup accelerator program in Korea launched by the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) and funded by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups. The program brings in foreign startups into Korea to collaborate with Korean VCs, startups, and corporations. For their 2021 program, over 2,500 startups from 127 countries applied to the challenge. XP Fantasy received 11,000,000 won for placing in the top 10.
XP Fantasy launched a beta version of its platform in Korea and got over 2,500 users in just 5 days. They were also ranked 7th on the Korean App Store for Sports.
Their focus for 2022 will be to focus on blockchain-focused games that reward gamers for their knowledge of various games including League of Legends, Dota 2, etc. Besides XP Fantasy, they released a beta for their second product called Elite XP in early 2022.
It is estimated that 58% of video game developers are beginning to look into blockchain technology as play-to-earn games are the latest trend in gaming. Most of the top games out there do not financially reward players for investing their time and effort into playing the games they love. However, through Elite XP, existing games will be able to add play-to-earn functionality. It will serve as a platform that facilitates daily esports tournaments for gamers to compete and earn cryptocurrency (Solana) based on their in-game performance.
In addition, players can use $XP to host their own contests with custom specifications. Contest hosts will receive 1% of the $XP prize pool upon contest completion. Therefore, players will be able to wager $XP against other players through Elite XP.
For those that want to give daily fantasy Esports a try, you can do a free month’s trial by using the code below.
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Wow, this sounds very intriguing! I will definitely check this out.