Once a burgeoning niche community, the eSports sector has become one of the hallmarks of modern entertainment, drawing thousands of spectators and uniting fandoms via major in-person competitions, live streams, and conventions. Currently, Statista projects the global eSports market to eclipse $1.87 billion USD by 2025 – a vivid testament to its growth over the last several decades. These strides come, in part, thanks to a variety of time-tested competitive formats spanning noteworthy titles in numerous genres.
In 2024, eSports’ most popular games are a patchwork of established favorites and rising newcomers. These titles include, but are not limited to:
League of Legends
Perhaps the title most synonymous with eSports’ popularity and success, League of Legends (LOL) is a household name in competitive gaming. The longstanding multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game has been a proving ground for some of eSports most skilled players, captivating a rising amount of fans since its 2009 launch. Last year’s LOL World Championship currently stands as the most-viewed eSports event in history.
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is one of several mobile games carving an unlikely niche in the historically PC- and console-dominated eSports field. Like LOL, this MOBA game has quickly established a vibrant competitive scene, with its fast-paced competitions adding additional format diversity to an already vast eSports mosaic. This year, the game has already garnered a collective viewership of over 2.2 million viewers globally.
Counter-Strike
Since 2000, Counter-Strike has been a cornerstone of modern first-person shooter (FPS) gaming. The predominantly team-based game has, naturally, endured as a prevalent eSports format, spawning a variety of sequels and spin-offs to add competitive nuance and bolster its overarching influence. Counter-Strike competitions yielded one of the highest total prize money amounts in 2023, coming in at over $20 million.
Valorant
Despite being a free-to-play title released in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first-person tactical shooter Valorant has amassed a passionate and far-reaching global player base, creating a particularly large competitive scene. Valorant is one of the newest games currently sitting in eSports’ higher popularity ranks (it launched in June 2020), and this stems from its intuitive team-based format (partially inspired by Counter-Strike) and its wide range of competitive modes.
These games are just a few invaluable drivers of the modern eSports community, which continues to flourish and expand as a result of their ongoing impact.