Hero Esports, ESL FACEIT Group, and Niko Partners have co-released a whitepaper titled The Esports Generation: Who They Are & Why They Spend, revealing that an estimated 400 million members of Gen Z regularly engage with esports worldwide. Data for the report came from a recent survey answered by 8,000 Gen Z ssports fans. To put the 400 million figure into context, it’s roughly one in five Gen Z’s, with males (68%) making up the greater bulk of the audience.
The findings covered a number of things, including content consumption and spending behavior, with genre preferences also taken into account. Altogether, it paints a fairly clear picture of an audience that’s not only digitally native and culturally switched-on – but one that is also willing to spend. Ultimately, the report will be useful to esports brands and organizations who can now make smarter business decisions aimed at younger audiences.
What brands actually get out of this audience
The commercial numbers are striking. 71% say they regularly sit down to watch esports content and roughly 85% of Gen Z esports fans notice brand activity in the space. More importantly, 74% say that brand activity has directly influenced a purchase decision.
As many as 21%, meanwhile, say they routinely attend esports events.
Two-thirds of those surveyed have bought a product tied to a collaboration with an esports team, game, or player. The top-performing product categories were, fashion, electronics and food and beverage, though not necessarily in that order.
The gender breakdown is shifting
🚨 | According to studies, Gen Z is more excited about watching Faker at MSI than having sex pic.twitter.com/Tt1LDtfBAk
— Abyss (follow for bangers) (@Abyss_ix) June 24, 2026
Males still dominate the audience (they made up 68% of the respondents). Female participation, though, is growing, and some specific competitions actually tell a more nuanced story. And unlike sports fans who may or may not play the sports they watch, 99% of those surveyed here said they play esports. Only 26%, meanwhile, watch cable TV.
At EFG’s DreamHack Birmingham 2026 festival in March, 41% of those who showed up were women. In China, female viewership surpassed 50% in both the PUBG Mobile Peacekeeper Elite League and the Honor of Kings Pro League (KPL) — two of the biggest mobile esports competitions in the world.
Those figures suggest the gender gap is closing faster in mobile-first markets, a trend worth watching as mobile esports continues to scale globally.
The numbers land at the right moment
The whitepaper’s release coincides with a moment of real momentum in esports viewership. The 2026 Intel Extreme Masters Cologne Major Counter-Strike grand final drew a peak audience of over 2.75 million, which represents a 141% year-on-year increase in peak viewers. Hours watched were up 185%, per reporting from Esports Insider.
That kind of growth makes it harder to dismiss esports as a niche. It also gives the whitepaper’s findings more weight — these aren’t projections about a potential audience; they reflect a scene that’s actively growing right now.
The whitepaper was first presented at LIONS Sport in Cannes, where Hero Esports Co-Founder and CEO Danny Tang and EFG CEO Niccolo Maisto appeared as speakers. It’s available publicly now and is aimed at helping brands better understand how to reach this generation.
Why this study carries weight
Research like this gets published regularly in esports. What sets this one apart is who produced it. EFG operates at the top of the competitive Counter-Strike and VALORANT ecosystem; Hero Esports has deep roots in China’s mobile esports scene; and Niko Partners is one of the most cited games and esports market research firms in the industry. Together, they bring access to data across very different regional markets: Western, East Asian, and Southeast Asian audiences included.
The combined institutional credibility here makes the whitepaper a more durable reference point for brands entering the space than most single-org reports.
The esports industry has argued for years that its audience is commercially undervalued. With 400 million engaged Gen Z fans, a 74% purchase-influence rate, and viewership records falling at IEM Cologne, that argument is getting harder to ignore.
