The half-year market revenue is 70 billion and the talent gap is over one million
Why does the e-sports industry have "not enough food"?
Our reporter Yuan Lu
"Hire a high-paying director of e-sports content operations and take full responsibility for the content center work..." Almost a month after the recruitment request was issued in the Moments of Friends, Beijing e-sports investor Wang Xihai has yet to find a suitable candidate. In April last year, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and others jointly released 13 new career information including AI engineering and technical personnel and e-sports players. After more than a year, the attractiveness of these new professions is still not optimistic, and many domestic e-sports clubs are in a state of shortcomings.
According to a report recently released by the China Employment Training Technical Guidance Center of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, there will be a huge gap in e-sports talents in the next five years, including nearly 2 million e-sports players and nearly 1.5 million e-sports operators. The reporter's investigation found that under the rapid expansion of the industry, there is an obvious gap in e-sports talents on one end, while young people are still worried about new occupations on the other. The contradiction between job supply and demand needs to be balanced.
Dissatisfied with recruiting hundreds of thousands of jobs
"E-sports clubs in the industry have a strong demand for operating positions, especially high-end talents, but it is not easy to recruit the right people." Zhou Jie, chief operating officer of KA Women's E-sports Club, lamented. Compared with other industries, the current industry salary for new occupations such as e-sports operators is not low. The reporter learned that the current annual salary of small and medium clubs is between 100,000 and 250,000 yuan, and the annual salary of large clubs can reach between 350,000 and 600,000 yuan, excluding bonuses.
"A good operation requires not only successful e-sports community operation experience, understanding of the game industry, but also experience in organizing online communities, and being good at forming and mobilizing communities." Zhou Jie said that the skills required for operations are more comprehensive. , The work content is also relatively wide, such as self-media operation, online promotion, live broadcast, etc., "In addition to knowing e-sports, you also need to have a lot of software skills. It is not that you can do a good job of playing the game and watching the game."
But at present, in addition to some large-scale e-sports clubs with professional management talents, the e-sports operators of many small and medium-sized clubs are transformed from e-sports coaches, players, and team leaders. Restricted by experience and platform, they lack professionalism in management and operation. According to data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, as of July this year, the overall scale of e-sports players in China has exceeded 500,000, but less than 15% of e-sports positions are in a state of manpower saturation. There will be a huge gap in e-sports talent in the next five years. There are nearly 2 million employees and nearly 1.5 million e-sports operators.
A surge in users but a lack of professional players
In an environment where the global sports market is affected by the epidemic, the e-sports industry is going against the current. According to the "2020 Global E-sports Sports Industry Development Report", during the epidemic this year, home life has brought plenty of free time. my country is expected to add 26 million e-sports users. For the whole year, Chinese e-sports users are expected to reach 400 million, a year-on-year increase. 14.3%.
There are many e-sports users, but why is the e-sports industry still short of major generals? Xiao Xu from Jiangxi has just finished his college entrance examination this year. He is a loyal fan of the Glory of Kings Pro League. This year's Glory of Kings World Championship made him hooked. However, when Xiao Xu wanted to fill in the e-sports major of Nanchang Institute of Technology, he was opposed by his family. In the end, Xiao Xu agreed with his family, "Professional career is only a few years. What can I do after retirement? Be a coach or anchor? It's better to learn a'decent' major to better support yourself."
"At present, the reason why it is difficult for e-sports clubs to find suitable players is that the uncertainty of e-sports itself has led to slow progress in all aspects of the industry chain. A game is cyclical, and the popularity of the game also determines e-sports. The life of the matter, this makes the capital have concerns about the construction of part of the e-sports industry chain." said Liu Jiehao, a senior analyst at iiMedia Consulting.
In Liu Jiehao's view, the age characteristics of e-sports players also make recruitment obvious challenges. “Currently, most e-sports players are concentrated in the age group of 18 to 25, and the chance of talent mining is extremely strong. Players want to work and need to temporarily give up their studies, but society’s current recognition of the e-sports profession needs to be improved, regardless of age. At the personal level or at the parent level, it is a difficult decision to give up school and engage in the e-sports industry."
A complete industrial chain system urgently needs to be established
On the one hand, it is difficult to recruit talents and the jobs are "not enough to eat". On the other hand, it is the rapid development of the e-sports industry. According to the "China Game Industry Report for January-June 2020", in the first half of this year, my country achieved 71.936 billion yuan in e-sports game marketing revenue, an increase of 54.69% year-on-year. Zhang Wei, vice president of Tencent Games, said that the global e-sports audience is expected to reach 495 million this year, and China will surpass North America to become the most commercially valuable e-sports market.
The city's support for the e-sports industry is also in full swing. Since May of this year, Beijing has successively organized more than 20 various e-sports activities, and projects such as the Shijingshan District Online Boutique Game R&D Base, Beijing Smart E-sports Center, and Shougang E-sports Industrial Park have also landed.
How to deal with the imbalance of talent demand in the industry under rapid expansion? Zhou Jie said frankly: "There are indeed many universities offering e-sports related majors, but the level is uneven." To solve the talent problem, the first thing to do is to build a complete industry chain system around e-sports. Liu Jiehao said that in addition to gradually increasing the society’s recognition of the e-sports profession through the professionalization of e-sports and event operations, clubs and event parties also need to establish an effective training and promotion system, improve the competition and training system, and ensure the availability of professional talents. Continuous supply.
The reporter noticed that the current domestic e-sports industry is trying to integrate traditional sports to achieve two-way incentives for events and players. Hou Miao, head of Tencent e-sports, said at the 2020 Global E-sports Leadership Summit that this year's Tencent E-sports Games will officially launch the provincial team competition mode. "This model can not only provide a high-level competition platform for more local e-sports players, provide better channels for local talent training, but also promote the development of the local e-sports industry, strengthen public awareness of the e-sports industry, and achieve Feed back the e-sports ecology."