"Fortnite" isn't just the video game your kids won't stop talking about. It's a multimillion-dollar business. And if early reports are correct, the costs to sponsor its upcoming World Cup tournament are about to blow other sports out of the water.
As Esports and sports business reporter Chris Pursell noted via Twitter this week, Epic Games, the company behind the popular co-op sensation, is "asking up to $25 million for partnerships for Fortnite World Cup, obviously a new record for the industry."
Fortnite World Cup is set to showcase some of the game's top players with a grand prize of $100,000. Qualifiers were apparently supposed to begin this fall but have since been delayed to 2019.
There is no confirmed date or location for the tournament, but as Pursell reported, the asking price to sponsor the event is already about five times as much as a typical advertisement during the NFL's Super Bowl, which were approximately $5 million for Super Bowl LII. Pursell later clarified that the $25 million partnership would be for "something far deeper than just a spot" on TV, for example, but its value is prominent nonetheless. A sponsored ad for Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals, he added, ran only as high as $829,577.
It's no secret, however, that "Fortnite" has the nation's eye -- and dollar.
The Wall Street Journal reported in August that parents around the country are now paying for their kids to get "Fortnite" tutors, replacing "old-fashioned" costs like those of piano teachers and baseball coaching so that their children can win more and level up. More than 125 million people play the game worldwide, per WSJ, and among the gamers' most avid supporters are professional athletes themselves. Los Angeles Lakers guard Josh Hart, for example, famously said in March that he once spent 10 straight hours playing "Fortnite," hinting that the game was almost more enjoyable than his own national championship win in college basketball.
