When considering the audience of eSports in Italy, data reveal that most Italian individuals who follow eSports events daily – the so-called avid-fans – were aged between 21 and 30 years and came from the South of Italy and the Islands as of 2019. In the same year, according to a survey, the most followed events by Italian avid fans were Call of Duty World League, the Italian Esports Open, and the FIFA Global Series. In this sense, whereas one of the most followed events related to football, it is interesting to notice that only few Italian Serie A football clubs had an eSports division as of 2018.
In 2019, while personal computers and smartphones were by far the favorite devices to follow eSports events, PlayStation Plus, Steam, and Twitch Prime were the preferred online gaming platforms among Italian avid fans. Despite the rising awareness of eSports in Italy, data from the Statista Global Consumer Survey showed that 75 percent of respondents who play video games regularly did not use any video game streaming sites, like Twitch or YouTube Gaming, in 2019. However, more than half of those who used video game streaming sites also spent money on these platforms in the 12 months prior to the survey.
