New DelhiEsports Collective (ESC)-owned esports fan engagement platform, FanSpace
New DelhiEsports Collective (ESC)-owned esports fan engagement platform, FanSpace. will be launched on 15 August in its beta mode and will go public on 18 September. The platform, they said, will solve the access and information flow problem that grass roots and the larger gaming communities face right now. It will provide statistical data, match reports, and results of all the competitive games taking place in India.The Indian video gaming and esports ecosystem, it said, lacks a data-driven fan engagement platform. The company said it noticed the business edge and worked on the opportunity to capitalize on community engagement and provide esports fans with all the information, statistics and data they needed about any match that is taking place with just a click of a button.“We dedicated several months of research to garner insights and understand the problems that lie in competitive gaming. As esports is heading towards a mainstream sport, there is a lack of authentic and one-stop availability of data, statistics and performance metrics of esports athletes and teams” said Aryaman Kataruka, co-founder, FanSpace.He said the industry estimates the number of esports players have doubled from 300,000 in 2020 to 600,000 in 2021 and esports teams also grew by over 50% from 60,000 in 2020 to more than 100,000 in 2021.Kataruka, the total prize money as per a recent EY report in 2021 crossed ₹200 million and there is also a meteoric rise in viewership, from 600,000 hours in 2020 to two million hours in 2021.“With our holistic approach, we are deploying various industry-first technology initiatives on our platform to merge competitive telemetry data along with community engagement and provide fans with a one-stop destination for all the information that they require,” said Rohit Reddy, co-founder of the platform added.While there are several social media outlets that provide users with news related to the esports and video game scene, none have so far provided fans with a central dashboard carrying quality data for competitive tournaments. Founded in 2021, ESC has played a role in helping nurture the gaming culture in India. It is backed by Polygon and other strategic investors. The esports industry in India will touch ₹1,100 crore by FY25, the Federation of Electronic Sports Associations of India (FEAI).