Can Esports Ever Become as Big as Football?

For years, esports was treated as a niche hobby while football remained the undisputed king of global entertainment. Today, that comparison looks far less absurd.

Esports arenas sell out, tournaments attract millions of viewers, and organizations compete for sponsorship deals worth tens of millions of dollars.

Somewhere between sold-out League of Legends World Championships, Saudi Arabia's ambitious Esports World Cup, and platforms such as Jawharabets offering esports markets alongside traditional sports, a serious question has emerged: can esports ever reach football's level of global influence, or is football playing a different game entirely?

The Scale Gap Is Still Enormous

The most important thing to understand is that esports is no longer fighting for legitimacy. That battle is over. The real challenge is scale.

Football remains the world's largest sport by almost every meaningful metric. The FIFA World Cup Final between Argentina and France in 2022 attracted close to 1.5 billion viewers globally, while FIFA estimates roughly 5 billion people engaged with the tournament across all platforms.

Meanwhile, the 2024 League of Legends World Championship Final became the most-watched esports match in history, reaching more than 6.9 million peak concurrent viewers. The difference is massive, but it is no longer measured in thousands, it is measured in millions versus billions.

A good real-world example is T1's victory at the 2024 League of Legends World Championship. Led by Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, often called esports' equivalent of Lionel Messi, the event generated global attention far beyond traditional gaming audiences and set new esports viewership records.

Yet even that historic tournament remains tiny compared to a single FIFA World Cup Final.

Esports vs Football: The Current Numbers