Female professional stage remains in the shadows – we don’t hear anything about tournaments for women, developers and organizers devote little time to them and, consequently, viewers’ interest in female teams is not high. But still, some events take place, and organizations assemble female rosters in various disciplines – we are going to work out the current situation, problems, and prospects of female esports.
Problems
Even though almost half of the players are women, there is a strong opinion that esports is only for men. It is supported by the fact that there is a restriction for women to participate in common competitions in numerous popular disciplines but they were unable to achieve success even locally. You can easily come across a statement that there is no point in watching female competition as a mid-level male team could easily defeat them.
Of course, it really obstructs the popularization of female esports as women who could pursue a competitive career do not have worthy role models who could show that they can perform on the highest level, too. So, most of them do not even consider esports as a platform where they could fulfill themselves. Another problem is a scarce schedule of female tournaments in the main disciplines and incompatible rewards in comparison with the ones you can win at male events. These are the main reasons that are the real obstacles to the development of female esports, but not the only ones.
Tournaments for women
The tournaments are not numerous but still, they take place – and rather major. For example, the Woman Star League has been hosted for several years in Mobile Legends, and in 2022 there was MLBB Women’s Invitational that was watched well – the highest peak number of viewers was 390 000 people. Such figures have been encouraging – it is clear that you can earn money on the event, so the prize pool may grow from $15 000, and maybe the tournaments will be hosted more frequently.
From the perspective of female esports development, we should put a focus on CS:GO. Here 2022 brought more fun as the organization of female tournaments was laid on ESL Gaming. The biggest tournament operator at the beginning of 2022 introduced lots of major tournaments and online leagues that belong to CS:GO WOMEN’S CIRCUIT 2022:
- ESL Impact Cash Cups. Having seized the initiative from its affiliated company ESEA, ESL has already hosted 5 spring series and announced three in the summer.
- ESL Impact. The series includes 2 seasons of ESL Impact League with summer and winter finals held in the LAN format with a prize pool of $123,000 for each final.
- ESL Impact Valencia 2022. The LAN tournament in Valencia with a prize pool of $100,000.
The overall prize pool of CS:GO WOMEN’S CIRCUIT 2022 will amount to $500,000.
What disciplines are the most watchable
The most popular discipline is Mobile Legends, in 2021 it became the leader in views by a large margin. The professional stage of the game is developing mostly in Southeast Asia so there is a huge potential for the growth of its popularity in other regions.
The second place is taken by Valorant, Counter Strike, Rainbow Six Siege, PUBG Mobile and FIFA are also in the top. There are a few female competitions in League of Legends and Dota 2 but these events don’t have many views if Riot had a plan to fix the situation, the company would start the female LCS, but Valve is still doing nothing.
Despite the fact that now female esports could not be compared to the popularity of the male branch, if they approach the development properly, it will have a great prospect with the help of mobile games. It may get closer to male esports in view and financial attractiveness, so, potentially, it is a very important point for the growth of the whole esports industry.
