Shanghai overtakes Los Angeles as top eSports city
Visitors try new digital games at the ChinaJoy expo in Shanghai in August.
Shanghai surpassed Los Angeles for top spot in the rankings of global eSports cities released by a team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University on Thursday.
The rankings are the second edition of an evaluation of global cities dedicated to developing the eSports industry, with the first edition released in 2021, in which, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Paris, Beijing and Berlin took first to fifth places.
The cities were evaluated in five aspects, namely industry ecosystem, infrastructure, matches, clubs, and social influence.
This year's rankings included 20 cities, with five new entries: Shenzhen, Riyadh, Jakarta, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
In the new rankings, Shanghai topped with 100 points, while Los Angeles was in second place with 93.4 points.
Beijing overtook Paris for third place, with Berlin remaining fifth. Seoul, Singapore, Seattle, Atlanta and Riyadh ranked sixth to tenth.
Specifically, Shanghai took first place in the sub-indicator rankings for infrastructure, tournaments organized and clubs.
As the team discovered, Shanghai had 259 stadiums by the end of August, including 56 for eSports, while Los Angeles had 236 and 62, respectively.
It has hosted 15 high-level eSports tournaments with prize money at or over US$1 million and the total prize pool was nearly US$57.5 million, compared to 11 tournaments and US$11 million in Los Angeles. The most influential tournament in Shanghai attracted about 3.3 million views, slightly higher than 3.1 million in Los Angeles.
Shanghai also had 13 eSports clubs ranked among the world's top 100 and nine of the world's top 100 eSports athletes, while Los Angeles had 11 and 5, respectively.
Shanghai has been promoting the development of the eSports industry in recent years. Since it introduced 50 measures in 2017 to promote the cultural and creative industries, the city has stepped up its efforts in building eSports-related infrastructure, competition venues and industrial clusters.
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The sub-indicator rankings
“The rankings show Shanghai has advantages in the development of the eSports industry with key elements such as infrastructure, games and clubs,” said Xu Jian, chief expert of the research team from the Institute of Cultural Innovation and Youth Development, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
“These advantages have attracted a lot of related companies from home and abroad to settle in Shanghai and has driven the rapid growth of local firms.”
The biggest challenge for the further development of eSports in Shanghai remained its relatively weak social influence, in which, it ranked seventh while Los Angles was top, according to the team.
The metric for societal impact encapsulates a myriad of parameters including, but not limited to, the volume of eSports-related online search queries originating from the city, the frequency of media news coverage, and the resonance within social media platforms.
Such data underscores a salient gap in the overarching public comprehension and acknowledgment of the eSports domain, signaling an imperative for more robust educational and promotional initiatives in Shanghai, Xu observed.
Xu said the recent establishment of the Esports Commission by the International Olympic Committee and the upcoming Hangzhou Asian Games provide good opportunities to promote public comprehension and acknowledgment of eSports, especially in Hangzhou.
