Management consulting firm for media, technology, entertainment, and sports businesses Activate has published its Technology and Media Outlook 2020, a comprehensive annual report on the state of the internet, technology, media, and entertainment industries. The report, which tracks the sports betting and esports sectors among others can be viewed at www.activate.com.
This, the sixth such annual report, focuses on topics such as the next era of social networking, digital marketplace models disrupting industries, super users, the networked body, and more. The report, said Activate, is based on groundbreaking proprietary research.
In a precis of the report, Activate predicts that the amount wagered on sports in the US will grow from $13bn to $149bn by 2023. “Wagering on sports will begin to take the shape of financial trading markets, with an infinite number of possible wagers extending well beyond the outcome of a game,” it noted. “When fully legalized, institutional investors will participate in the sports betting market and employ sophisticated data sets and AI to gain an edge.”
On the topic of esports, the report predicts that the relatively new genre is here to stay and will soon rival major traditional sports in the US in both audience size and revenue, which is expected to approach $7bn globally by 2023.
“This year, we decided to not only focus this Outlook on the year ahead, but also to take a look back at previous predictions and how they shaped the latest and greatest trends, including the boom in AI, betting, and gaming,” said Michael J Wolf, CEO and Co-Founder. “The forecasts shared today will profoundly impact technology and media industries as we approach 2020 and beyond.”
The report goes on to cover off some of the main requirements for sports betting to achieve its full potential in the US. These include, inter alia, federal regulation to permit interstate mobile gaming; network performance and reliability to enable real-time betting; and sufficiently low taxes.
