With Covid-19 accelerating the speed of digitalisation, talking heads just cannot stop talking about epoch-defining technology like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and e-commerce.
Yet according to New York-based fund management firm Global X, there is one sector that may have flown somewhat under the radar — gaming and esports. Locked at home and deprived of sports on television, people are turning to gaming to entertain themselves.
According to Stefen Hall, project lead, media, entertainment and culture, at the World Economic Forum (WEF), US telco Verizon found an increase of 75% in gaming traffic during peak hours from March 10 to 17 amid the Covid-19 lockdown, compared to increases of 12% in digital video traffic and 20% in web traffic during 1Q2020 as a whole. Livestream software firm Streamlabs also discovered that platforms like Twitch, YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming have seen usage hours surge by 20% across all services as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Gaming giant EA Sports experienced a 15.9% return in 1H2020, beating US benchmark indices like the Dow, the S&P 500 and the MSCI US, all of which fell due to the Covid-19 shock.