Esports in Madison, WI: Game On!
Schools and game developers are propelling the Madison Region into an early lead in this emerging field.
Esports in Madison and around the world has come out of the dark basement and into the limelight in recent years.
The global esports market – including media rights to livestream events, sponsorship dollars, merchandise sales and even in-person ticket sales – topped $1 billion in 2021. That figure was expected to increase nearly 22% between 2022 and 2023, according to ResearchandMarkets.com.
“Game development is billions of dollars annually, and esports is starting to get into that range,” says Craig Kettleson, enterprise development director for the Madison Region Economic Partnership. “It’s coming on strong, and there are major players involved in it.”
The Madison Region is becoming one of those players, led by area game developers such as Raven, Lost Boys Interactive, PUBG Madison, Epic Games, PerBlue, Filament Games, Respawn Entertainment and Microsoft. In addition, the region’s colleges and high schools have started establishing competitive esports programs, enabling students to participate in a team sport while also training for a potential career in the gaming industry.
“This isn’t just a bunch of kids in the basement playing video games,” says Ben Mund, the head esports coach at Edgewood High School. “These are kids actively getting together to practice and then competing in a sport, with the opportunity to learn some new skills that are going to be important in the future marketplace, like media creation and marketing.”
Root for the Home Screen
Competitive esports was still just a nascent subsector of overall gaming as recently as five years ago. Things changed quickly in 2020 amid the restrictions on public events following the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
“It’s one of those unexpected outcomes of COVID,” says Joe Hanson, Madison College esports coach. “Everyone was stuck in their homes, and interest in gaming in general increased. Then they’d hold these esports tournaments online, and viewership just skyrocketed.”
In 2021, Madison College established an official esports team and created a gamer room where players could practice and compete. The team has captured consecutive National Junior College Athletic Association Esports championships, with former student Kaden Crockett earning NJCAAE individual grand champion honors.
“There was nothing formal about that first year. The players were already at the college. They just went from gaming with friends to being on a team,” Hanson says. “It’s already become something much greater.”
Elite Play at Edgewood
The same type of growth is taking place at Edgewood High School, which formed an official esports team in 2018. Edgewood Elite has won the state championship in the game Overwatch each of the past two years and was named a 2022 “Who’s Who” in Wisconsin Esports by the Milwaukee Esports Alliance.
“We try to keep it similar to any other athletic sport,” Mund says. “The kids practice after school, they have weekend scrimmages. It’s not something that people can just immediately pick up. It’s tough to learn, and takes teamwork and collaboration.”
“It’s also a great way to introduce kids to STEM, by using these games as a way to get them interested in the technology side of things as well.”
From Video Games to Vocation
That is important, because just as with traditional athletics, most esports players will not go on to have lucrative professional careers as a gamer. But playing the games can pave the way to a career in the industry, especially in the Madison region.
“We have a thriving game-development industry in Madison, with more than 35 companies based here that make a lot of the games that are played in esports,” Kettleson says. “And the industry is growing, in both the number of companies and jobs.
“There is a fine line these days between movies, television and video games. They share talent and creativity. And because of the way digital distribution works, these startup companies are instantly global.”
Madison is tapping into this interest by hosting such events as the annual M+DEV game development conference, as well as the inaugural Wisconsin Games Alliance Esports Tournament last November at the Alliant Energy Center.
A few months later in 2023, the Orpheum Theater in Madison was one of the stops for the Røkkr Home Series, a live esports event for Call of Duty fans.
“We had a great turnout for that,” Kettleson says. “We hope it’s the first of many we have long-term. We’re right at the entry point with esports, and we’re trying to grow right along with it.”
Get to Know the Madison Region
Want to learn more about living and working in the Madison Region of Wisconsin? Check out the latest edition of Livability Madison Region Economic Development.
