Bobby Kotick, the Activision Blizzard CEO, recently took the microphone at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, as reported by adWeek, and took some time to discuss some of the numbers and metrics behind the mega-publisher.
We don’t regularly talk about Activision Blizzard here, it’s not really our remit. That said, some fascinating figures came out of the company that, well, is known for producing outstanding figures.
Citing 500 million monthly active users, with 40 million of those coming from Call of Duty, Bobby Kotick -long serving Activision, and now Activision Blizzard CEO- commanded the discussion regarding licensing of sports, notably eSports, at a recent event.
Leagues like Call of Duty, or Overwatch, he compared, “have the potential to be the next NFL, or NBA.” This said, citing statistics that saw the current viewership of the games easily matching preseason NFL.
This big, takeaway, statistic was that the industry has 125 million players who play viewer to gaming in addition to partaking; this aside from the fact that through the mega-publisher’s various titles they can confidently cite 500 million monthly active users over 196 counties.
This statistic actually places the company, as was the focus in the adWeek post, at five times the active userbase of streaming revolutionary Netflix – whew.
Of course, that great big number earlier mentioned was largely due to Activision Blizzard’s acquisition of mobile giant King back in 2015/16, with most users now accesible to the publisher, however not necessarily captured as a viewership audience.
What it does mean is that when Acti-Bliz shouts, half a billion people have to hear. Although with a 196 country berth it’s going to require a multi-lingual team, amongst other issues.
Does all this translate to ‘audience’ per se? Maybe not in the way it does Netflix with it’s monthly charge, but it’s certainly an instance of a single company in an industry taking the first giant step against another media form in reach and doing so with great confidence.
Regardless of all this, Activision Blizzard, who now command MLG, have, when it all boils down to it, a means to validate gaming as a viable sport to half a billion people through advertising.
Good.
