Mail.ru Group bought the largest e-sports holding in Russia from Usmanov

Mail.ru Group bought Russia's largest eSports holding ESforce, owned by Alisher Usmanov, for $100 million. Esforce will remain an independent holding within Mail.ru Group.

• One of the largest esports holdings in the world was created on the basis of the Virtus.pro team, in which Mail.ru's largest shareholder Alisher Usmanov invested $100 million in 2015. But he is not listed as the owner of ESforce in the company's press release, Vedomosti . writes The co-owners of the company are Anton Cherepennikov and the Highland Falls Investment fund.
• ESforce's revenue in 2017 may be about $19 million (one and a half times more than in 2016), EBITDA loss - $15 million. ESforce itself expects that in 2018 its revenue will increase by 80%-100%, and losses will decrease twice.
• ESforce owns 14 websites, 209 groups in social networks, analytics and video production studio RuHub. Online broadcasts of the holding's projects annually attract more than 82 million unique users, and in 2017 its audience was 116 million people. ESforce was the first to build a stadium in Moscow and hosted two major cyber gaming championships there.
• The deal with ESforce is not that big by world standards. gaming streaming service Twitch for $970 million. example, Amazon bought In 2014 , for BAMtech company.
• Last year, the volume of the global esports market reached it at $3.8 million in 2016 $696 million, the Russian segment of PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated , and SuperData and PayPal at $35.4 million with a forecast of growth to $37 million by the end of 2017. You can read more about the eSports economy here .

What do I get from this?

If your child spends all his time playing Dota or Minecraft, perhaps you shouldn't stop him - millions are already being earned from eSports in Russia.

Marina Bocharova, The Bell