Professional video gaming has grown to remarkable stature over the last couple of decades. However, now that it has crystallized at the top of the entertainment world, selling out stadiums, driving markets for some of the world’s highest-paid influencers, and creating avenues for elite gamers to make millions of dollars a year, interest has turned toward those games that have perhaps not reached their full potential.
Gaming titles like Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant have been part of the contemporary wave of eSports leagues that have helped to establish eSports as one of the promising new fields in live global entertainment and betting markets.
As we will explain today, the success has been so sudden and impactful that derivative betting markets have also achieved great success by offering various avenues and eSports betting markets for people to bet on individual games as well as tournament outcomes.
Just like any other multi-billion-dollar industry, though, those who work within it are not resting on their laurels. More recently, they have explored avenues for individual games that still have scope to grow, as well as new eSports betting markets that could flourish into an expansive new market, which is where NBA 2K enters the equation.
Can Sports Games Challenge The Status Quo?
When the idea of professional video gaming began to gain serious attention during the mid-2000s, much of the rhetoric centered on the biggest games in the world and how they would transition into an online market and a competitive, professional gaming arena. Sports games, such as NBA 2K, were identified as one of the more obvious candidates, alongside other games like Madden NFL and FIFA.
However, once eSports leagues started to take shape, it became clear fairly quickly that first-person shooter games and team games were commanding the largest audiences, and by default, the largest prize pools. Counter-Strike is a prime example, with CS2 tournaments and top teams generating global interest within the gaming world, as well as in some cases, the broader sporting and betting markets.
Again, within the space of a few tournaments, CS2 betting markets started to emerge, but they were part of a select few markets in this field. Now that a multi-pronged advertising campaign is being launched across social media sites such as Twitch, YouTube, and X (formerly known as Twitter), there is a concerted effort to challenge this status quo.
Companies are looking to market games like NBA 2K as the next generation that can challenge the status quo established by games like Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant at the top of the eSports pyramid.
Incentivizing NBA 2K Tournaments
Given the strong supply and demand element in professional video gaming, advertisers and marketers have returned to the drawing board to create a market for NBA 2K eSports tournaments.
Unlike first-person shooter games, which often have a set format for online play and career mode, the multiple avenues of sports games like NBA 2K pose a unique challenge for marketers looking to catapult them into the most popular professional video gaming markets.
Given the depth and complexity of 2K’s design and gaming mechanics, online play and eSports aren’t the first thing that many gamers think of. The extensive story mode that you can find in MyCAREER and playing socially with friends often trumps the idea of intense competition.
One of the biggest positives here is that basketball has a global market, and the NBA is by far the most popular league from an international standpoint, which is being leveraged as a marketing tool to attract a global audience to the potential of basketball eSports.
This is the springboard that marketers are using, with venture capitalist funds also investing capital to attract the idea of NBA 2K tournaments. However, it’s a slow-burning process, and if it’s going to gather momentum, it will be over years, not months.
Looking To The Future Of NBA Esports
NBA 2K is not the only sports game looking to muscle in on the colossal eSports gaming market. Innovators are leaving no stone unturned, ranging from VR gaming and AI implementation to innovative social media marketing ideas, to attract as many new customers as possible to the concept of NBA eSports.
Although sports betting is a great market to leverage, it can help put the idea into people’s minds. However, a combination of inventive marketing strategies, market accessibility, gameplay that encourages multiple-player competition, and a game design that keeps audiences engaged will be necessary.
Although some hardcore NBA 2K fans, like myself, would argue that it already has this, this is not an opinion shared by the broader gaming community. Still, if the right amount of time and strategy is invested in developing NBA 2K as the next big eSport, then it could play a key role in professional video gaming, as well as a pivotal role in the broader gambling revolution, which will be a byproduct of its underlying success.
