Activision CEO Thinks eSports Could be "the next NFL"

eSports are the talk of the town as of late, what with the League of Legends World series happening, the recent disbandment of the Starcraft 2 Pro League, and that hilarious joke Nintendo slipped into the Switch trailer where they pretended Splatoon was an eSport.  And coming into this conversation is Ubisoft CEO Bobby Kotick, who recently told AdWeek that eSports have the potential to become big... really big.

Perhaps in an "overstated" kind of way.

"If you think about our players, if you take Call of Duty, we have 40 million monthly active users-these people are spending hours of their day playing a game, an organized competition-that's the same size as the preseason NFL. These leagues like Call of Duty or Overwatch have the potential to be the next NFL or NBA."

Activision, of course, with the recent purchase of MLG and a dedicated channel to professional Call of Duty play, is now a frontrunner in the world of eSports, so the fact the CEO could be so optimistic is perhaps unsurprising, even if it is completely unbelievable. At least he didn't pretend eSports could ever be bigger than the NFL. That would have been laughable.

Anyway, he continued:

"The real question though is the way they're watching today is over-the-top, so we have our own channel MLG, which is our broadcast channel for professional eSports. What we view our opportunity set as if Leslie or ESPN wants to pay for the rights, a greater amount, that we can monetize on our own channel, we'll take that."

Ah. Money. The crux of the recent boon. Well, Activision, between you and Blizzard,I don't think you're wanting for opportunities to monetize as-is. But go ahead and reach for the stars, man, we believe in you.