. There is a supportive infrastructure for professional teams, ranging from established teams backed by large corporations to the presence of several e-sports stadiums across the country. Within teams, there are different staff positions such as
. Furthermore, gamers signed to professional teams receive regular salaries alongside other streams of revenue, allowing them enough financial security to invest time into gaming.
Game-centric online e-sports viewership
There are two ways to watch pro gamers play: online or in-person. A 2023 survey found that the game itself was the
biggest draw when watching e-sports broadcasts online. That same year, around 36 percent of fans reported
having watched e-sports broadcasts once or twice a week, usually for about an hour.
Online viewership was fairly evenly split across four platforms, though one of them, international streaming giant Twitch, has since ceased operations in South Korea.
Player-centric e-sports competitions in South Korea
With several e-sports stadiums available across the country, over half of surveyed fans indicated their intention to
attend competitions in-person. Unlike with online broadcasts, the presence of pro gamers themselves was the
biggest factor influencing fan attendance, similar to going to a concert to see a live performance. Support for e-sports teams was centered more around the players themselves rather than the specific game they were playing. Common fan behavior such as buying branded merchandise and following social media activity as well as content releases was also present in e-sports fans. According to a 2023 survey, T1 was the
e-sports team with the largest fan support in South Korea by far. Backed by SK Telecom and Comcast Spectator, T1’s star player Faker (Lee Sang Hyeok), was both the most successful Korean pro gamer and the leading League of Legends (LoL) player worldwide that year.
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