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Blogvent Day 4: One in Four game players is over 50!

Business | Sponsorship | Technology

The headline represents just one of the surprising statistics from ESA, on this occasion the Entertainment Software Association rather than our colleagues at the European Sponsorship Association. Many of us might have heard that the average age of game players is 35, but how many of us knew that there are almost twice as many women over 18 playing games than boys under 18?

And there is now no doubt that gaming is a significant market, growing almost 23% in 2008 to $11.7 billion. New consoles and games are major events and the release of Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare generated sales of $550M in the first five days. The combination of this market success and the newly found demographics got us thinking. What are the implications for the marketing and sponsorship sectors, given that gamers don’t conform to the geeky teenager stereotype many of us previously had? How can sports and sponsorship become relevant to the gaming industry?

There currently seems to be little overlap. There are a few sponsorship examples in the snowboarding arena and two relatively low key examples in motor sport: six times WRC champion Sebastien Loeb with Playstation and the Le Mans 24 hours winning Peugeot Endurance racing team with the 908 HDi FAP sponsored by XBOX 360. Is it that gamers do conform to the couch potato image and therefore don’t participate in sport? But if that is the case, perhaps they watch sport rather than take part and so sponsorship could be a relevant and powerful tool. Perhaps the industry thinks it is bigger enough and powerful enough that it doesn’t need to promote itself in this way, in the same way as Apple tends to take a very proprietary and singular approach to its marketing.

What do you think?

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