Macau, HK business leaders confident in esports opportunity

Three business leaders from the Hong Kong and Macau esports industry said at a forum held in the HKSAR that they are ready to embrace opportunities generated by the Greater Bay Area.

“What opens up before us is a market with 70 million population, especially considering the fact that Hong Kong has only a tenth of the whole population in the Greater Bay Area,” said Eric Yeung, president of the Esports Association Hong Kong, as cited by Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Yeung made the remarks at “GBA Opportunity: Hong Kong’s Esports, Ready to Fly”, a session of the Digital Entertainment Leadership Forum 2019, which aims to review the status quo and explore collaboration among the esports industry across the Greater Bay Area.

Derek Cheung, chairman of the Hong Kong Esports group, agreed with Yeung. He said that esports is an emerging new sector for both Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland with high economic potential. “But the mainland grows faster than us, of course,” said Cheung.

New technology is a special trait for the esports industry in the mainland, for example in the areas of virtual reality and augmented reality, which enrich the setting of computer games. This is an area from which Hong Kong can learn, said Cheung.

Mario Ho, the president of the Macao E-sports Federation, said Macau shares similarities with Hong Kong in its esports industry. He pointed out that booming video game companies in the mainland have not found equivalents in the two SARs.

“Now we’re working with Tencent and some live video streaming platforms to help our games and our players into the mainland market,” said Ho. DB/Xinhua