Game players at the 2018 China Joy in Shanghai Photo: VCG

As more and more Chinese e-sports teams get involved in global gaming competitions and events, China's e-sports industry is gaining increasing attention.

As such, Shanghai's Yangpu district, Nanjing of East China's Jiangsu Province and Hangzhou of East China's Zhejiang Province recently issued a declaration at the Yangtze River Delta Electronic Sports Industry Development Forum held in Tongji University recently to support the development of an e-sports industry in the Yangtze River Delta region.

The forum also announced that a collaborative innovation center of e-sports for this region will be established.

In Yangpu, the "e-sports" concept debuted in 2016, when Perfect World, a top gaming company, held the "Perfect Ceremony" at the Zhengda Gymnasium of Fudan University. Currently, the district is home to a number of e-sports enterprises including Perfect World, Bilibili and Alisports.

Every year, various e-sports competitions, including the Dota 2 invitational tournament by Perfect World and World Electronic Sports Games by Alisports, are held in the district, creating a heated yet fun competition atmosphere.

Alisports is also working with Yangpu Stadium to bring e-sports competitions and studios to the district. In addition, a professional e-sports competition venue which can accommodate nearly 900 people is now under construction. It is expected to be opened in January of 2019.

Game players compete at a gaming festival held in Shanghai in October. Photo: VCG

Exploring new models

China's e-sports industry is flourishing in the Yangtze River Delta region. Xie Jiangang, head of Yangpu, said at the forum that, according to the declaration, the three sides will jointly establish a mechanism for cooperation and development of e-sports in the region and promote city-level exchanges, so as to build a larger market and stimulate new driving forces.

The three sides will strive to create an "ecosphere" for the development of the industry in this region, thus turning the Yangtze River Delta region into a "cluster" of enterprises in the e-sports industry chain. Analysis and research on the e-sports industry will also be a highlight, so as to build the industry into a pivotal force in the development of the new economy.

Moreover, over the next five years, a number of platforms, such as those for industry information sharing, experimental training, human resource and vocational education R&D, will be established to support the Yangtze River Delta collaborative innovation center.

This information sharing platform will serve as a "bond," facilitating cooperation and connectivity between universities, vocational colleges and enterprises by exploring new models of personnel cultivation in vocational colleges and operation of human resources in enterprises.

World's largest e-sports market

The human resource platform will strive to develop professional e-sports skills and standards, explore the establishment of a discipline system of secondary vocational schools and vocational colleges, and an e-sports lecturer certification system so as to boost the development of this industry in a standardized and systematic way.

According to statistics released at the forum, through 2018, the value of China's e-sports market reached 86.27 billion yuan ($12.56 billion), registering an average annual growth rate of 41.23 percent.

Among the 590 million e-sports players in the world, 350 million are Chinese, which has made China the world's largest e-sports market. More than 10,000 competitions are held by over 1,000 clubs in China every year.

China's e-sports team won two gold medals and one silver medal in the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games. Invictus Gaming (iG), a Chinese mainland team, won the championship in the finals of 2018 League of Legends. E-sports will be considered a formal sports event at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games.

The story was based on a press release by Touch Shanghai.