Esports
Sport. Emotion. Stories.
What is esports? Sport within gaming, where clubs, players and stories create recurring content and branding through a season. Every figure on this page has a source and a year.
The short version
Organised competition in video games.
Clubs with contracted players, leagues with seasons and qualifiers, tournaments with prize money, and broadcasts with commentators and an audience. The structure is the same as any sport. What differs is where it is watched.
Counter-Strike is the backbone of the Nordic scene and has been for over twenty years. Sweden has produced world champions in it since the early 2000s, and the audience that grew up with the game back then is now adult.
Gaming or esports
Gaming is broad. Esports is sport within gaming.
Gaming includes many games, communities and ways to play. Esports is the competitive part, with clubs, players, matches and stories that people can choose to follow over time.
Gaming
- Many games and communities
- Different ways to play and follow
- Interest around the game
Esport
- The competitive segment
- Seasons and matches
- Players you follow
Esports is a smaller part of gaming: the competitive layer where teams, seasons and players are central. It gives a brand a sports context to work with, while still being part of the wider gaming culture.
That is why we work with esports. A club can carry a message in its own voice, through the content that its audience already chooses to watch.
Gaming can be the right audience in many contexts. An esports club adds a relationship to a team, players and a story, which gives a partnership something concrete to build around.
The audience
They are not where most media plans are looking.
In 2025 YouTube passed linear TV in Sweden for the first time. Nordicom's Mediebarometern, based on around 6,000 respondents aged 9 to 85, reports the following for an average day:
Nordicom notes that linear TV viewing has a heavy skew towards the older audience. That is the whole point: a media plan built on broadcast TV does not miss this audience by accident. It misses them systematically, every single day.
Who watches
The audience that is hard to reach any other way.
The esports audience is young and global. Exact figures differ between analyst firms, so we only show numbers we can source.
The demographic is the one most brands say they struggle to reach: young adults who do not watch broadcast TV, skip pre-roll, and are quick to spot advertising dressed up as something else.
Why sponsorship
A partnership gets a place in the story.
A club gives a brand a context that people return to: matches, players, results and the stories around them. The partnership can be made visible through the club's own content, with the club as sender.
The club's story
- Matches and players
- Wins and losses
- A reason to return
The partnership
- Content and branding
- The club as sender
- A role through the season
Sport creates return visits
You follow the matches, a favourite player, the wins and the losses, and come back to see how it goes. That is how sport builds emotional connection over time, and esports has the same room for clubs, players and stories.
The arena is also digital
The relationship with the audience continues in the club's channels: broadcasts, chat, match content and news. We also produce coverage and content around the club’s participation in local LAN events and tournaments.
Presence through the year
An esports club plays, practises, travels and publishes through the year. The pace changes with the season and the calendar, while content can keep the partnership present between the biggest moments.
The club gives the partnership a voice
The audience follows the club for the sport, the players and the community. When a brand has a clear role in that context, the club remains the sender and the partnership has a natural place in the content.
Content carries the partnership
A logo on a jersey is one part of a partnership. Matchday, results, launches, video and graphics make the brand present in the club's ongoing story. EEG takes responsibility for producing that content and keeping the delivery together.
The Nordics
A Nordic plan can stay close to the scene.
Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland share tournaments, teams and a Counter-Strike history. A partnership can develop across these markets when the right clubs and relationships are in place.
We work through a selective network of relationships. That gives the brand one point of contact and lets the plan stay rooted in the club, the local scene and the content being made.
Sources
Figures on this page are dated. Industry estimates for market size and audience vary considerably between analyst firms, so we name the source rather than presenting a single number as settled fact. Last reviewed August 2026.
- Mediebarometern 2025 – Nordicom, Göteborgs universitet, i samarbete med Bonnier News, Mediemyndigheten, Sveriges Radio och SVT. Cirka 6 000 svarande, 9–85 år. nordicom.gu.se · svt.se
- Mediekonsumtion 2025 – Mediemyndigheten. mediemyndigheten.se
Contact
Want to know more about esports - and whether it fits your strategy?
Tell us what you sell and who you want to reach. If esports is the wrong answer we will say so.