The Report for the esports Evaluation Meeting Has Come Together.

■The Report for the esports Evaluation Meeting Has Come Together.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry and JeSU, the Japan esports Union, hosted the “esports Stimulation Evaluation Meeting.”

I have finished putting together my report on the 5 meetings that I served as the Chairman for.

This may be the first governmental report related to esports in the world.

Here is a summary of the market size outlook and actions for development.

The committee members came from various fields, as participants included professional esports players, team representatives, event hosts, representatives from the gaming industry, and members of IT companies, TV stations, investment companies, research firms, law firms, healthcare institutions, health-based companies, and municipalities.

It was a thrilling exchange of opinions, and each of the thoughts of the intellectuals who all shared the common goal of healthy development of esports was constructive.

The participants from Kasumigaseki were the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry; which put this meeting together; the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters of the Cabinet Office; the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts, and Telecommunications; the Consumer Affairs Agency; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology; and the Japan Sports Agency.

This involves more than industrial strategy, as intellectual property strategy, telecommunications policy, regional policy, consumer policy, education policy, and sports policy are also involved.

The Japanese government also has the correct awareness.

The first success is that this forum involving the public and private sectors was created.

Here is the content of my report.

The first topic was the size of the esports market.

We will make the market that is directly involved with esports grow by 16 times from 4.4 billion yen in 2018 to 70 billion yen in 2025.

If we include peripheral markets, such as food and drink, merchandise, and education, we will make the current 34 billion yen grow to 300 billion yen in 2025.

We set lofty goals.

In Japan, esports fans represent 8% of the gaming market.

The strategy is to bring this up to Korea’s benchmark of 47%

This means that we want to have about 25 million fans, around the same as the number of fans of professional baseball.

In order to do so, we made suggestions like the following to industry and government.

1) Improve the appeal of esports games

2) Improve the appeal of esports events

3) Improve the economic status of players

4) Turn fans into hardcore fans

5) Lower the bar for establishing laws and rules

We also evaluated the significance of esports in society from the lens of the SDGs.

1) Make life fun, healthy, and lively

2) Realize a society of coexistence and long, healthy living and revitalize the economy and rural areas

3) Realize a world where diversity is respected, sustainability builds resistance to adversity, and everything is clean and fair

Under these circumstances, we raised the following items spanning industry, government, and academia that require continuous evaluation.

1) Create guidelines related to the use of game-related IPs and permissions

2) Prepare offices across Japan

3) Identify the significance of esports from an educational perspective and organize data

Japan had been an underdeveloped esports nation despite being a major gaming power.

By building momentum from the intentions of industry, government, and academia, Japan should be able to emerge as an advanced nation.

I get the sense that this is just the beginning.