Esports Companies: How to Grow Your Business in 2024?

Are you wondering how esports companies can grow their business this year?  You’ve come to the right place to look for answers.

In this article, I will explain what you need to do to grow your esports business given the current gaming culture.

How Esports Companies can Grow their Business

As an eSports business, you will go through the following steps:

1. Strategize about growing your esports business

How would you go about building your eSports business and growing it? You need to formulate a sound strategy that innovates in the esports ecosystem.

You need to do the following to build such a strategy:

• Create a vision for your eSports business.
• Onboard a competent project manager (PM), an experienced IT architect, and a team of knowledgeable business analysts (BAs).
• Plan to create a game that stands out from the crowd, and plan to popularize it.
• Think about how you will create appropriate content for the game as well as for your organization.
• Plan to create a great app that covers all aspects of your esports business.
• Look for sponsors, partners, and investors.
• Plan for the legal groundwork.
• Decide on your organization structure and operating model.
• Plan for your infrastructure including IT infrastructure.
• Find and onboard the first team. You also need to do the groundwork for onboarding more esports teams in the future.
• As you plan for growth, you need to think of how you can onboard the right talent in your organization.

You can read “How do I start an esports organization?” to learn more about such a strategy.

2. Decide your esports offering

Now that you have formulated a strategy, what do you do next? You need to decide what you will offer. Depending on your business model, you might plan to build a new game. You would also need to build your esports management software.

What should you offer in your new game? To determine this, esports companies need to do the following:

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• Study the esports market and popular games. Find out the niche that you can exploit.
• You might need to undertake market surveys and intense discussions with various stakeholders.
• Remember that popular video games already have a huge fan following, therefore, you need to identify differentiators that you should offer.
• You will likely launch your game in an iterative manner. You will launch a “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP) first, subsequently, you will enhance it based on the market feedback.
• Visualize the content you will offer, and prioritize features for the MVP.

Need help with these steps? Our guide “5 tips to create a sleek MVP” is exactly what you need.

What should you offer in your esports management software? You need to offer the following features:

• Your users should be able to create tournaments and host them.
• A successful esports management software should enable users to manage arenas and events.
• You need to offer robust analytics capabilities in your esports management app.
• Your users should be able to manage memberships, games, and advertisements.
• Users should be able to stream live and recorded events.
• Users should be able to communicate using this software.
• A successful esports management software should enable users to build communities.

Want to learn more about esports management software? Check out our guide “How to build the best esports management software?”.

3. Plan to use suitable cloud platforms

You would want to focus on business domain-related development instead of IT infrastructure management, wouldn’t you? I recommend that you use cloud computing to eliminate IT infrastructure management efforts.

What kind of cloud platforms should you use? This depends on your project scope, however, I will recommend cloud platforms assuming you will build web and mobile apps.

For web app development, you should use a “Platform-as-a-Service” (PaaS) platform. As I have explained in “10 top PaaS providers”, PaaS platforms offer many advantages, e.g.:

• They manage the cloud infrastructure, networking, operating system, middleware, and runtime environment. You can concentrate on development.
• PaaS platforms help you to integrate APIs and add database resources to your app.
• Reputed PaaS platforms offer powerful DevOps and auto-scaling solutions.

I recommend that you use AWS Elastic Beanstalk, which is a well-known PaaS platform.

How about mobile app development? I recommend that you use a “Mobile-Backend-as-a-Service” (MBaaS) platform. Our guide “How to choose the best Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS)?” explains the advantages of using an MBaaS platform. These advantages are as follows:

• Such platforms manage the cloud infrastructure and persistent storage, therefore, you don’t need to spend time and effort building and managing the mobile backend. You can focus on the front-end and business logic.
• MBaaS platforms help you to scale your mobile app.
• You can easily integrate APIs when you use an MBaaS platform.
• You can implement features like “push notifications”, user management, etc. easily if you use an MBaaS platform.

I recommend that you use AWS Amplify, i.e., the MBaaS offering from AWS.

4. Choose the right technology stack

Which technologies should you use? I recommend the following:

• js for web app development: Node.js is a highly popular open-source runtime environment, and you can create performant and scalable web apps using it. Streaming is important for esports, and Node.js is good for implementing this feature. As I have explained in “10 great tools for Node.Js software development”, a vibrant community of developers has created many useful shared tools for Node.js.
• Java for native Android development: If you are developing mobile apps, then I recommend that you develop native apps for mobile devices. While you need to develop them separately for Android and iOS, native apps deliver the best “user experience” (UX) and performance. For native Android development, I recommend that you use Java. Many Android developers know it since it has been a mainstay for native Android development for a long.
• Swift for native iOS development: Swift, the modern language championed by Apple has many powerful features. You can create highly performant and scalable iOS apps using it. Swift makes it easier to code bug-free apps, moreover, maintenance becomes easier. I have explained its advantages in “How to migrate your Objective-C project to Swift?”.

How would you provide an easy and consistent way for your front end to access the backend? I recommend that you develop APIs for your core features, and I suggest the following:

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• Develop RESTful APIs since REST (Representational State Transfer) is the de-facto standard for API development.
• Use PostgreSQL and MongoDB for API development, assuming you will need both RDBMS and document databases.

Now let’s move on to the next step that esports companies need to grow their esports business.

5. Find the right 3^rd party APIs/SDKs and other development tools

While you would develop your own APIs for core features, you can use a few 3^rd party APIs for non-core features. I recommend that you use the following 3^rd party APIs/SDKs:

• Wowza Video and the Wowza Streaming Engine: You would need to implement the streaming feature in your esports management app. Wowza offers a live video streaming solution, and you can sign-up for its “Wowza Streaming Cloud”. The Wowza GoCoder SDKs and APIs come free with it, and you can consult its extensive documentation to use it.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM): You can use FCM to implement the “push notifications” feature in your proposed Android app. FCM offers comprehensive documentation.
• Apple Push Notifications service (APNs): For implementing the “push notifications” feature in your proposed iOS app, you can use APNs. Its detailed documentation will help you to integrate it into your app.

Are you planning to incorporate “Augmented Reality” in your planned game? If you are, then you can use Amazon Sumerian. It’s a comprehensive AR/VR engine, and you can do the following with it:

• Create AR assets and upload them;
• Create hosts;
• Edit scenes;
• Publish scenes.

Read “Amazon Sumerian Augmented Reality tools” to learn how to use Amazon Sumerian.

6. Onboard a competent project team

You need the right people, don’t you? Onboard competent people for the following roles:

• UI designers;
• Game developers;
• Web developers;
• Native Android developers;
• Native iOS developers;
• Testers;
• DevOps engineers.

How do esports companies find the right software development people? We, at DevTeam.Space, are here to help! Read our guide “How to find a good software developer” for more information.

How would you implement a code review process in your project? It’s important, however, it’s hard to find experienced reviewers. Once again, we at DevTeam.Space can help! Check out our guide “Why choosing DevTeam.Space to review your code can ensure your software product is a success”.

Do you plan to hire individual developers and testers first and then form a team? Remember that you need to spend a significant time to form a cohesive team that way! I recommend that you onboard a field-expert development team since they are already cohesive units.

Read our guide “Freelance app development team vs. field expert software development teams” to learn more.

7. Develop your apps: Keep a few key considerations in mind

Your app design and development will depend on your exact features, however, what are the key factors you should consider? I would recommend you keep the following key considerations in mind:

Application security best practices for esports companies

Your web and mobile apps will deal with the personal information of players. These will also deal with financial information such as prizes, advertisements, team salaries, etc. You need to secure your app by taking the following steps:

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• Proactively mitigate key application security vulnerabilities like SQL injection, broken authentication, etc.
• Use techniques and tools like encryption, multi-factor authentication (MFA), next-generation firewalls, antivirus solutions, and real-time threat intelligence solutions.
• Secure your APIs using authentication tokens, encryption, secure gateways, etc.

Wondering how to secure your apps? Our guide “How to secure your Fintech app” can help.

API development best practices for esports companies

Follow best practices for API development. You need to do the following:

• Use a tool like Postman to develop APIs, and use Swagger to document them.
• Host your APIs using your AWS cloud account, and use PostgreSQL and MongoDB to store data.
• Manage the development, test, and production environments effectively.
• Secure your APIs.
• Create meaningful API endpoints, moreover, design effective rules for API requests and responses.

Need help with API development? Check out our guide “How to build RESTful API for your mobile app?”.

Final thoughts On How Esports Companies can Grow their Business In 2024

While this guide will help esports companies to build their business models and grow their esports revenue, remember that it’s a competitive market out there. Launching a product with sufficient differentiators can be hard, therefore, we would advise esports companies to work with a reputed software development company.

Read our guide “How to find the best software development company?” to find such a development partner.

If you, as a business CEO or CTO, are still looking for competent game developers with a deep understanding of the esports industry, DevTeam.Space can help you here with its field-expert software developer community, experienced in developing market-competitive software solutions using the latest technologies.

Write to us your initial esports project specifications via this form and one of our technical managers will get back to you to further discuss project planning, implementation, management, etc. with you.

Frequently Asked Questions by Esports Companies