Brits don’t have faith in the ability of homegrown esports talent here, according to new research.
87% of those surveyed said that UK esports players aren’t good enough for the world stage.
“Research from the Crowdology panel shows that the British general public don’t believe that UK gamers compete at the top level,” read a statement from a press release.
“Only 13% said that the UK has gamers good enough to challenge on a world stage. Since this is the case, Brits don’t seem willing to get behind the sport and support these players like we do for professionals of other sports.”
The survey, which asked 1,500 British people overall, was conducted by online survey panel website Crowdology.
It’s worth noting that just 20% of participants were aged between 16 to 29, with 32% in the 30-44 age bracket, 28% in the 45-59 group and 20% aged over 59 years old. It’s not clear what kind of knowledge of esports the respondents had.
Gender was almost an even split, with 43% of participants male and 57% female.
“Only 13% said that the UK has gamers good enough to challenge on a world stage.”
The responses in the survey seem odd, because over the past year or so, the UK has been good enough to perform on the world stage in several esports titles.
Last year was a decent year for the UK, with some impressive wins and top performances from UK esports players and teams.
Gorilla lifted the FIFA Interactive World Cup, Misfits’ Alphari and Maxlore did well in League of Legends, almost beating SKT in the World Championship, Team UK were impressive in the early stages of the Overwatch World Cup, we had UK champions in H1Z1, Gwent, Old School RuneScape and F1, plus Splyce became the first UK CoD team to win major international event on US soil.
That’s not to mention the countless other UK esports talent we have outside of players, such as casters, hosts, coaches, analysts and more.
The Crowdology press releases added: “It is important that we don’t become pessimistic [about the survey results]; the UK esports industry is far from small, and we have professional players who are capable of competing on the world stage.
“We need to encourage the general public to support and enjoy this industry and its participants, which will in turn bring about increased funding and events, and will soon see the UK market posing serious competition on a global scale.”
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
