E-Sport - Red Bull beats SAP

E-sports, with its rapid pace of development, is highly interesting for SAP. It offers SAP a wide range of opportunities and starting points for integrating technologies such as the Hana platform and thus actively developing the sport further.

Whether e-sports are a real sport like soccer, wrestling or surfing is a controversial issue in Germany. And German citizens are also divided:

In a representative study commissioned by the digital association Bitkom, 31 percent of respondents believe that e-sports is a real sport. 65 percent are not of this opinion. In 2018, the approval rating was still 29 percent, in 2017 23 percent.

The sponsorship of the Dota 2 team Liquid is SAP's first cooperation with a professional e-sports organization. E-sports opens up a very interesting target group for SAP: the "digital natives." They are tech-savvy, cosmopolitan, committed and well-educated.

The demand for meaningful data and analytics software is high. Performance coaching features, helpful insights for fans, scouting and talent management for teams - all are in demand.

Furthermore, game publishers, promoters and league organizers have specific requirements and needs. SAP's goal is to work with all stakeholders, become part of the ecosystem, and add value to this growing community.

"E-sport events now fill large halls around the globe and generate high revenues in the millions. The entire industry has not only grown more and more, but has also become increasingly professionalized."

said Bitkom Executive Committee member Olaf May at the start of Gamescom this year in Cologne, the world's largest trade fair for computer and video games.

The SAP Esports Show- case, presented for the first time at Gamescom, allows all visitors to experience Dota 2 in a completely new way. In an interactive 3D model, game scenarios are projected onto an abstracted Dota 2 map.

Here, visitors can access additional information on the characteristics of Team Liquid's current Dota 2 players, as well as watch individual scenes as highlight plays or follow and analyze an entire game.

A key purpose of data analytics in e-sports is to observe and evaluate moves and tactics. The SAP Esports Showcase thus bridges the gap between gaming and business by demonstrating how data contributes not only to the professionalization of e-sports, but also to intelligent business management.

The technical basis for the showcase is the Hana platform and the SAP Cloud Platform (SCP), which are also an integral part of the analytics software developed by SAP for e-sports scenarios.

Among other things, the Esports Showcase will present a demo version of the analytics tools for performance, training and competition optimization developed by SAP together with Team Liquid.