The number of mobile gamers in Vietnam still ranks behind Indonesia and the Philippines.

Vietnam ranks 3rd in Southeast Asia in terms of the number of mobile gamers (54.6 million).

According to Newzoo's report, as of November 2022, the global gaming industry's size had reached 184.4 billion USD, of which the revenue of the mobile gaming industry alone was estimated at 92.2 billion USD, accounting for about 50% of the market share.

The report also shows that, of the 3 billion gamers in the world , the number of players on mobile devices is up to 2.8 billion people, while PC games have 1.4 billion players and console games have 900 million players.

Also in this report, Newzoo predicts that the global gaming market will reach 211.2 billion USD by 2024. The annual growth rate in the period 2020 - 2025 is 3.4%. This is a very positive signal showing that the global gaming industry is developing steadily and bringing high economic value.

Also according to the Newzoo 2022 report, some prominent regions with fast mobile game market growth in 2022 include: Latin America, the Middle East, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Of which, the Southeast Asian market reached 4.5 billion USD, second only to Latin America with an expected average growth rate of about 7.4% in the period 2020 - 2025. For comparison, the average growth rate of the global mobile game industry is 3%/year.

Although the growth rate is very high compared to the world average, the revenue of the mobile game market in each country of Southeast Asia has uneven development and is not proportional to the number of players in each country.

Specifically, Indonesia is currently the country with the highest number of mobile gamers in 2022 (138 million people), leading the market revenue of more than 1.4 billion USD. The Philippines ranks second in terms of number of players (58 million people) but the revenue is in the top 4 (592 million USD). Meanwhile, Thailand has only 38.3 million players but the revenue is in the top 2 in the Southeast Asian market (763 million USD).

Vietnam ranks third in Southeast Asia in terms of the number of mobile game players (54.6 million, or more than 50% of a population of 100 million), but revenue is still quite modest compared to the number of players, reaching only 507 million USD.

It is estimated that by 2025, the revenue scale in the Vietnamese market will still be quite far behind that of Thailand, and will account for a modest proportion of the total revenue of the gaming industry in Southeast Asia.

According to Newzoo, global eSports revenue reached $957.5 million in 2019 and $1,059.3 million in 2020, respectively, an annual growth rate of 10.6%. Newzoo predicts this revenue will reach $1,598.2 million, a growth rate of 15.5% in 2023. ESports revenue mainly comes from sponsorship, copyright, publishing fees and tournament ticket sales.

Meanwhile, according to the 2019 annual report of the International Football Federation (FIFA), FIFA's total revenue from this sport that has been around for over 100 years only reached approximately 766 million USD, which is only 2/3 of that of e-sports. Therefore, from the 2019-2020 season onwards, FIFA had to shift its focus to the FIFA eNations Cup (online football tournament on Xbox and PlayStation platforms) to both catch up with the trend and deal with the gloom caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In terms of followers, eSports has seen impressive growth: in 2021, eSports had 489.5 million followers, of which nearly 50% were regular followers. This number is forecast to increase to 640.8 million in 2025.

In 2020, FIFA estimated the cost of organizing the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 to be nearly $1.7 million. Meanwhile, a representative of Riot Games' global events division said they only had to spend about $100 million annually to organize League of Legends tournaments globally. And despite the impact of COVID-19, this eSport title has brought in $1.75 billion in revenue for the parent company (in 2019, the game's revenue was $1.5 billion). Some other major eSports titles such as DotA 2 also organize tournaments in the form of crowd-funding, so the cost the organizers "spend" is only $2 - $3 million/tournament.

The attractive ROI has made e-sports a field that many countries have been eyeing recently. This field has even created a new profession for the young generation, with income levels that can reach thousands of USD/month. Middle Eastern countries have also built special economic zones with preferential policies to promote video game production companies, after realizing that this industry can replace oil as the new “black gold”.

In Southeast Asia, this sport has been officially included in the competition since SEA Games 30 and by SEA Games 31, Vietnam has "reaped gold" in this sport with a total of 4 gold medals, 3 silver medals, ranking first in the entire tournament. E-sports athletes were also awarded the title of Grandmaster for the first time thanks to their excellent achievements.

According to the App Annie 2020 rankings, Vietnam ranks 7th in the world and 2nd in Southeast Asia in terms of the number of downloaded games. In addition, Vietnam also ranks 3rd in the top 10 game application manufacturers in the region; for every 25 downloaded games, 1 game is produced in a Vietnamese studio. Revenue from the domestic game industry has also seen positive growth in recent years. According to a report by the Ministry of Information and Communications, revenue from the game industry in 2021 reached more than 7 trillion VND, expected to reach more than 10 trillion VND in 2022.

The Messenger