Competitive video gaming is one of the leading lucrative strands of the video game industry, with stacked competitive calendars, huge sponsors and partnership deals and millions of hours of entertainment being streamed 24/7 on sites such as Twitch and YouTube.

With the industry filled with veteran and more recent hordes of passionate fans, there’s never been a better time to dive into the plethora of ways of reporting, covering and producing Esports content of your own. Here are some of the best tips to look out for writing authentic Esports content.

Always ‘Esports’

Most people operating within the world of Esports have been doing it since its infancy and have been instrumental in shaping the industry from the ground up since. Because of this, not only is a very close knit world where reputation is everything, but it’s also a scene dominated by individuals who know their stuff, whether that’s the ins and outs of the games and players competing in them, or the terminology a writer for the field should be employing.

One of the great debates about the world of competitive video games is how you spell out the industry’s name. Here are some of the most common ways we’ve seen used around the internet:
  • ‘ESports’
  • ‘E-sports’
  • ‘e-sports’
  • ‘esports’
  • ‘eSports’

None of these terms are correct and will immediately wipe out any chance of your content being taken seriously by those within the community. The industry-agreed way of spelling the term out is currently ‘Esports’, with a capital ‘E’, lowercase ‘s’ and not a dash in sight.

Pick Your Sources

Esports has, and always should be, about collaboration. It’s been built up by a certain demographic of people and whilst mainstream attention is great for building up brands and increasing awareness, there’s nothing that turns off Esports gurus more than when they’re reading content that is constantly sourcing from platforms such as NewZoo. Not to say these sites are bad or ill-informed, it’s just that they have a tendency to begin making sweeping comparisons to things that Esports veterans don’t care about, namely the comparisons between gaming and things like television, music or film.

Gaming, and more specifically Esports, isn’t a sweeping term people use to describe themselves with, it’s an umbrella term for a much wider and diverse range of pro athletes. Someone who plays League of Legends has an entirely different range of skills and traits than someone that specialises in Fifa for example.

Scan the industry for the leading names and experts in the subject you’re writing about for the best chance of building authority. For example, if I were writing about the latest business dealings in the industry I would visit Esports Insider, or if I were after an article about the latest Esports betting trends and markets, I would look at what Unikrn were saying.

Enough About Fortnite

One of the things that really shows off someone not knowing much about the Esports industry is when it comes to drawing up a piece of content and it’s littered with all these sweeping claims and statistics about Fortnite.

For over a decade now, the world of Esports has been dominated by three major titles: League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. These are games that are almost exclusively known for their high skill ceilings and competitive circuits and continue to take up a humongous chunk of the industry’s worth. It’s hard to ever see a game coming along in the near future and disrupting it.

Whilst it’s undoubtedly a huge game with some potential in the competitive scene, Fortnite is not a leading Esport and shouldn’t be regarded as one when writing up content for the community.