While the amount of investments being made in online football games grows globally as well as in Turkey, the Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray and Beşiktaş football clubs have rolled up their sleeves to develop infrastructure in this area with the new investments that are coming to Turkey. While the games market, which is one of the fastest growing markets in the world, shows a similar upward trend in performance in Turkey, the share of e-sports is also increasing day by day. E-sports, which is the most watched sports branch in Turkey after football with about 8 million active players in Turkey, has become more apparent with the growth of Riot Games, the producer of the League of Legends (LOL), in the Turkish market, investing $10 million. The Beşiktaş, Galatasaray and Karşıyaka sports clubs and the 1907 Fenerbahçe Association have begun working in this area to develop their infrastructure.
While Beşiktaş was the first sports club to enter the e-sports field, other Turkish teams have also achieved major successes in world tournaments organized in this field. Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekçi said that projects are underway to pave the way for the game-software industry, which had reached an export volume of $500 million as of 2016. Noting that Turkey is quite capable regarding this issue, Zeybekçi said, "We will do good work on that. Our aim is to be the center of the world in this sense. There will also be special tax regulations on them," Zeybekçi said.
A prize pool of TL 50,000Meanwhile, the Intel ESL Turkey Championship for DotA 2 players kicks off Aug. 26 this year. The winners will be determined following the championship run, which will continue until Oct. 14. The Intel ESL Turkey Championship will be Turkey's biggest DotA championship with a prize pool of TL 50,000 ($14,600).
Games market exceeds $600MWhile the worldwide games market is worth $110 billion, mobile games and e-sports constitute $40 billion and $800 million of this figure, respectively. There are about 30 million active players and 8 million e-sports players in Turkey, making Turkey one of the top 20 games markets globally, exceeding $600 million in the games market.