Esports in the Sun – Spain and its place in the esports world

For most people not from Spain, the country is synonymous with lovely beaches and great summer holidays. Of course, that’s not all it has to offer – alongside wonderful sights, great people, delicious food and some pretty good music, Spain is also a bigger player in the esports world than you may think! Next to countries like Germany, the US or even Japan, this may seem a little odd, but Spain, with its esports spending of $2 billion last year, is actually the world’s 9^th largest games market in the world!

Making top ten is no small feat here, and with over 24.6 million players in the country, it’s safe to say sunny Spain loves esports as much as most of us do! This is also reflected in the number of tournaments and competitions that take place in the country. From Fifa 19 to Clash Royale, from League of Legends to Rocket League, from Hearthstone to Rainbow Six Siege, there are competitions for just about every esport out there – in fact, each of the listed games there has at least two competitions in Spain in the next month alone!

© AS

Looking back at last month, another huge event stands out – for the first time ever, the Global Esports Summit was held in Spain – more precisely, in Madrid. The huge conference centred around ecommerce, advertising, esports, IT and video games in general, and it was a huge success across the board. With names like ESL, Team Heretics and Global Sportainment at the event, it’s no wonder that the event was such a success.

The most played games include Rocket League, Hearthstone and CS:GO across the board – while League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm for example are also quite popular, it’s those three that make up the bulk of the esports movement in Spain.

From an economical standpoint, Spanish esports are thriving as well – the country just became home to a very special start-up, for example. Founded completely late last year, start-up Gamestry aims to use the $300.000 it raised in order to create a platform that lets gamers learn from top esports experts as directly as possible. Both the ambitious idea and the huge sum raised position the two brothers from Barcelona that started Gamestry perfectly in order to succeed – they are already collaborating with international organisations and their approach is to only sign with the best of the best players, rather than as many as possible, in order to keep the quality of their platform as high as possible.

Whether their venture succeeds remains to be seen of course – such is the nature of young start-ups – but we are certainly hoping that their project will succeed as well as esports are flourishing in Spain in general – that is to say, we hope to soon be able to use Gamestry to polish up our own gaming skills!

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