Future Games Spotlight Target Audience

The event in the Russian city of Kazan is looking for an online audience of 250 million unique viewers, organizers have said 

The organizers of the Games of the Future have set a target of 3 billion views and 250 million unique viewers for live broadcasts of the event, which kicked off in the Russian city of Kazan this past week, according to the head of the event, Igor Stolyarov.   

Games of the Future are an international ‘phygital’ tournament, which combines competitions in the physical and digital domains, thus testing athletes’ skills in both the real and virtual worlds.  

Speaking about the audience for the tournament, Stolyarov stressed that the organizers “are more interested in online spectators rather than offline [ones], not to offend the offline spectators.”  

“The super target that we’ve set for ourselves is 3 billion views” for the whole two-week-long event, which “would correspond to approximately 250 million unique spectators all around the world,” he explained.  

Stolyarov said that video games were chosen for the tournament based on some 50 parameters, but “the first selection criteria that we looked at was viewership.”  

“How this discipline or cybersport is viewed all around the world, on Twitch and YouTube.... How many videos have been produced on that matter; how many streamers [play it],” he explained.  

Among the disciplines that will be featured at the tournament, are such iconic video games as Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, WarFace, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and others.