China Reports $21B in ‘Esports Revenue’ in 2022

Pictured: Shoushan Sun, Chairman of China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association (CADPA) at the conference. Credit: The Esports Advocate

On Friday, the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association (CADPA) and the Shenzhen Nanshan government hosted the 2022 China Esports Annual Conference in Shenzhen, China. The Electronic Sports Committee (ESC) of CADPA reported that the Chinese esports industry generated revenues of ￥144.5B RMB ($21B USD) in 2022, which marked a decrease of 14.01% year-over-year (YoY) compared to 2021. CADPA is a nonprofit organization owned by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

China esports revenue included 81.52% in esports games revenue, 15.28% from esports streaming revenue, 1.32% from esports tournament revenue, 1.25% from esports organization revenues, and 0.63% categorized as “others.”  Apart from 81.52% from esports game revenue, the esports industry in China generated ￥26.7B  ($3.89B) in streaming, tournament, and esports organizations, with a decrease of 4.17% YoY compared to 2021.

ESC pointed out in its findings that the reason behind those declines was mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic and relevant restrictions. ESC also pointed out that China now has 488M esports users, including 56.4% male and 43.6% female. In addition, 108 esports tournaments were hosted in China in 2022, and Shanghai was still China’s most popular esports city, hosting 22.39% of esports tournaments during the year. Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Shenzhen hosted 8.9%, 7.4%, and 5.97% of those esports tournaments, respectively. 

Through every index that CADPA pointed out from the 2022 decrease, China has fully reopened at the beginning of 2023 and dropped the pandemic restrictions. There were several positive developments that came from the industry in January and February, such as Valorant receiving game approval in the country and Chinese tournament organizer VSPO getting a $265M investment in cash from Savvy Games Group.