Paris (AFP)

The French media are paying more and more attention to the esport, a craze that the final of the world championship League of Legends, held Sunday in Paris, will give an extra boost.

A flourishing sector (more than 5 million French have already attended an esport competition, and 2 million have practiced, according to a study by Médiamétrie in 2018), the esport already has a vast ecosystem of specialized media, with Live match broadcasting platforms (Twitch, YouTube, Mixer ...), news sites, thematic channels and webtele with their experts and commentators.

But esport is also starting to become a hot topic for more mainstream media.

"The media were for a few years in a phase of exploration, testing, or even opportunism vis-à-vis the esport Some were just trying to check the box esport, but others have seen a strategic interest In the face of the hearings of competitions that have continued to grow and the media have understood that it was important to position early to find a place, "said Bertrand Amar.

This former animator of video game broadcasts quickly understood the potential of esport, especially when the arrival of streaming has allowed audiences to explode, while it was once to move in person to see the matches. He founded the first French specialized channel, ES1, as well as a player agency dedicated to professional gamers, before joining the Webedia group.

The latter is present on almost all esport activities, except the edition of video games which remains the preserve of software manufacturers.

In addition to specialized sites such as the unmissable Millenium.org, Webedia is developing more and more content or programs for other media, such as the magazine "Pro Gamer" launched since the start of the RMC radio. One way to take advantage of the craze of other media brands for the esport.

- "An accelerator" -

The team has for its part developed strongly for four years its coverage of the esport. The sports media will send seven people to Bercy to cover the final on Sunday, broadcast on its site, and will also offer many digital topics, plus an eight-page folder in the newspaper this Friday, and the front page of his weekly magazine.

It is a multimedia article published in 2015 and "seen by 700,000 people in a few days" that served as a spark, tells AFP Jerome Cazadieu, editor of L'Equipe.

The newspaper has since developed this theme on its website and created a section around a full-time reporter, successfully: the number of visitors to this theme has increased from 450,000 to 800,000 between 2017 and 2019. And, icing on the cake , these are almost exclusively new surfers, which increase the total attendance of L'Equipe.

Another example is France Télévisions. After testing the pitch with virtual tennis tournaments, the public group set the stage for the Parisian final of "League of Legends" (LoL). For the first time, it will broadcast the competition live on the platforms of France TV Sport, with the support of the specialized company O'Gaming, and will propose esport topics including "All the sport" and "Stage 2" .

"League of Legends is a massive global phenomenon, and the fact that the final is in Paris, that we had the opportunity to establish a partnership with O'Gaming is really an accelerator", explains AFP Laurent Eric The Lay, its director of sports.

"We are addressing all the French and our goal is to bring the general public into this universe," he says. It is also a good way for the public service to address young people, a strategic priority, and to anticipate that the Paris 2024 Games are a showcase of French sports.

The potential seems enormous for the media, but it must also prepare for a future challenge: inevitable inflation of broadcasting rights, publishers of games seeking more and more to monetize them. Still modest, "the market of rights explodes" with growing interest in the discipline, and "free will not last" for audiences now accustomed to broadcast platforms funded by advertising, warns Bertrand Amar.

© 2019 AFP