Mobile Premier League (MPL), along with Newzoo in collaboration, have released a new report on the Paid Competitive Gaming (PCG) market during the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.
The report is titled Global Paid Competitive Gaming Report 2023 and estimated the PCG market to cross $16 billion by 2024.
According to the report, PCG is expected to expand 6X faster, at a CAGR of 31.9% from 2021 to 2024, than the worldwide mobile games industry, which is anticipated to reach $223 billion by that year, at a 4.9% CAGR.
Head of Consulting at Newzoo, Tony Habschmidt, said, “This shift highlights that publishers are embracing new and innovative models, while players expect new and inventive forms of interaction with their favorite games.”
“PCG has become a burgeoning example of this. It focuses on allowing players to monetize their experiences with and through other players, opening up the potential to be rewarded for their skills. As new players are drawn to it from traditional gaming and adjacent entertainment realms like sports and social media, PCG will democratize and redefine the industry,” he added.
The report also states that the US, India, Mexico, UK and Germany will be the top PCG markets. India was dubbed the second biggest PCG market after the US, projected to reach $3.5 billion by 2024.
Speaking of the contribution, the mobile gaming market dominated the global gaming industry, with more than 2.8 billion mobile gamers contributing to more than 50% of the global gaming revenue in 2021 and is expected to reach 3.1 billion players by 2024.
The PC gaming sector recorded 1.4 billion players, and console gaming reached 871 million, estimated to reach 1.5 billion and 943 million by 2024, respectively.
A comparison between skill games and traditional plates reported that, on average, skill game players have more games installed and usually have 4.6 – 6.2 hours per week of average playing games, compared to traditional gamers with 3.5 – 5.3 hours per week on games.
With the rapidly growing market, the report also estimates that around 15-48% of traditional games are likely to shift to skill-based games. Indian gamers are most likely followed by gamers in US and Brazil.
The number of smartphone users worldwide is anticipated to increase by 45% from 2.9 billion to 4.8 billion by 2024, according to a previous report by Newzoo. Affordable smartphones, particularly Android devices, will mainly drive this surge in developing nations. The increased speeds of 5G technology will also improve gameplay and allow growth in the cloud gaming sector.