“I’ve never seen (the game) as a male environment, I think it was turned into and now we have to change that.” The phrase comes from Willian Pesenti, director of SBT Games, a company of the TV channel group. He recalls that women constitute 51.5% of the gamer scene, according to data from the PGB 2021 survey, which is therefore a majority among gamers. “In this way, women are seen as a minority in the scenario more for a cultural issue of the gamers themselves and, mainly, for the opportunities that are given within the game market”.
For him, women today are inserted in all spaces of the gaming universe, whether in front of cameras, in events and streams, as casters, professional players and content creators, or behind them, as programmers, artists and game developers. Therefore, the question of the women who make up the scene is ‘if we are the majority, why don’t we have the same visibility as men?’, highlights Pesenti, who reveals that the company that directs the female audience predominates on the battlefronts.
Willian Pesenti (Disclosure)
According to him, currently, some publishers already promote events and championships aimed at the female scenario, also due to a demand from the players themselves. “However, it is important to emphasize that actions aimed at the female audience are still very far from acquiring the same visibility as the competitive male scenario”, he comments.
About competitions and events aimed at gamers, the executive says that at SBT Games they have already partnered with Riot Games, a championship just for them. “Valorant Women’s Alltars were very positive. Today, the community itself is excluding those who try to remove women from the place that also belongs to them”, she says.
With the expansion of the gamer scene and its consumers, in recent years, as Pesenti reported, the games market started to be moved not only by brands considered endemic, that is, game developers, peripherals (computers and accessories), consoles etc., but also by non-endemic brands, which see in the industry potential publics both for the consumption of their final products – as in the case of energy drinks, food, clothing, personal care items and services (internet operators, delivery platforms streaming) – as for the engagement with the brand concept, as in the case of car manufacturers and financial institutions, which have become major sponsors of eSports events. “What has been observed is greater involvement of non-endemic brands in fairs and large championships, such as CCXP, BGS (Brasil Game Show), Game XP, CBLoL, LBFF, Gilette Ult and Red Bull Player One”, he says.
He also says that today the main eSports championships are CBLOL (League of Legends), Major Championships (CS:GO), LBFF (Free Fire), Six invitational (Rainbow Six Siege), Valorant Champions, etc. “In the case of competitions aimed exclusively at the female audience, we can mention Valorant Game Changers (organized by Riot Games, which even had an edition held in partnership with SBT Games, All Stars Valorant).
During the pandemic, he also confirms the sector’s growth. “According to the PGB survey we had a 12% growth in new players and 75% of gamers played more during isolation”, he declares, adding: “The gamer already had his way of dealing with isolation, but many were able to see the importance and relevance of games only now. Playing has become a new model of socializing. Those who played during the pandemic were not isolated for one day”.
For him, the expectation of growth is high. He hopes to have “caravans of eSports fans coming to SBT to watch the best content in person”. “We have more and more eSports fans. Team shirts, kids wanting to become as good as ‘such’ player from ‘such’ team. I think we Brazilians already have this in essence, we already know the passion we were born learning to have and I think we’ve already seen it in other sports. It’s just time for games to be taken seriously”, he concludes.
