Poker and Esports have, in recent years, been growing increasingly symbiotic. In the Esports world, online poker has found sophisticated platforms like Amazon-owned Twitch that are ideal for broadcasting the game, and in poker, Esports has found a more established and popular industry on which to model itself as it grows. 

Here we take a look at three major ways we can expect online poker to change Esports as we move into the 2020s.

#1 Redefining the term

So may rightly ask whether online poker is, by definition, an Esport. In truth there is a considerable and growing crossover between the two worlds, with many prominent Esports athletes such as Froste now placing greater emphasis on their poker play. Within the poker world there has been a healthy debate over the years as to whether poker itself can be defined as a sport at all. Dictionary.com defines a sport as an “athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess, of a competitive nature”. 

Most people would happily concede that poker requires skill, and is certainly competitive. It seems the general confusion comes down to how one chooses to define physical prowess and exertion. While it may appear rather sedentary, the long stressful games certainly take their toll on the body and many poker athletes swear by their targeted nutrition protocols and exercise regimes as a crucial component in their success. 

This debate is familiar to fans of Esports from their own community, and many top level competitive gamers are similarly training like “conventional” athletes in order to ensure victory. eSports traditionally stands for “electronic sports”, a reference to the fact it historically pertains to the playing of video games. One may rightly question whether the broader concept of what constitutes an Esport is becoming less electronic, or whether poker, riding high since the online poker boom of the early noughties, is now more electronic than ever. 

#2 Raising the stakes

Esports is no stranger to impressive prize pools at the top tiers of the game, especially in recent years as the scene has attracted growing investment and sponsorship. The 2018 final of Riot Games’ League of Legends championship had a pot of $6.4 million, though this is still chump change when compared to 2019’s Fortnite World Cup, which posted a staggering $30 million prize pot. To date the highest prize pot in an Esports tournament goes to Valve’s 2019 DOTA 2 world championship ‘The International 9’, which attracted a crowd-funded pot of $34 million. 

These numbers are only going to increase with each successive year and it’s reasonable to expect the growing inclusion of poker in the Esports fold to push those winnings to new heights. 2019’s World Series of Poker prize pool was $82 million, which is 135% larger than Valve’s DOTA tournament. Popular Esports platform Twitch played host to PokerStars’ 2020 Stadium Series tournament which had a prize payout of $59 million, a new record cash prize for the site. Higher prize winnings are sure to be one of the driving forces behind Esports veterans increasingly trying their hand at the game.

#3 Shifting the demographic

It comes at no surprise to discover that the prevailing demographic of Esports athletes and spectators skews young, given the relatively recent development of the video games industry, especially when set against traditional games like poker that have been around for centuries. In the United states, approximately 62% of Esports fans belong to the 18-34 age group. 

To contrast, poker players are generally older. Reasons for this include the higher disposable income that, on average, comes with age as people move into more senior work roles. Another good reason is simply that poker, like other non-digital forms of entertainment, is more familiar to those of the pre-internet generation. The average age of a poker player is between 35 to 44. As a result of this, one major shift we can expect to witness as a result of poker and the world of Esports commingling is the average age of spectators increasing. While this was already likely to occur as competitive gaming reached a wider audience and garnered broader mainstream acceptance, the coming together of these two communities is certain to catalyze this process.