December 14, 2024
Although the esports industry is growing in popularity, women remain underrepresented in gaming. This year’s gaming statistics show that men and women comprise nearly equal portions of the global gamer population. Out of the approximately 3.32 billion gamers worldwide, 1.7 billion are male, while 1.39 billion are female. However, this equality doesn’t translate to competitive gaming.
According to a study by Bryter, less than 5% of professional esports players are female. This underrepresentation makes it even harder for women to consider pursuing a professional esports career. However, recent trends show that the situation is gradually improving for female gamers, offering a glimmer of hope in the industry’s evolution.
Industry overview and Raidiant’s mission
A significant factor in why the situation is changing for female gamers is that the esports industry, as a vast and very lucrative industry, understands that progress relies on inclusion. And inclusion is something that platforms like Raidiant are working on. Raidiant’s mission as the only wholly women-led platform inspires and elevates the next generation of women in gaming. Raidiant’s founder, Heather ‘SapphiRe’ Garozzo, explains the importance of Raidiant as follows:
I think many of my peers and esports fans would answer this very differently than I do. I’ve been involved in esports for twenty years, and when I was a competitor that long ago, I was often the only woman in the room. When I’d attend events as a fan, I was the only woman. This has obviously drastically changed in two decades, and now I see women make up nearly fifty percent of the player base and a sizable percent of the viewer base.
Still, we’re not seeing a lot of women at the top. There are few women executives leading esports teams. There are few women top players. Many esports titles have few women on broadcast desks. The inspiration for Raidiant was to improve those numbers, To encourage more women to compete in esports (rather than just play casually), to encourage more women to produce and admin events, and to encourage more women to pursue casting.
Further, for the women that do compete, do caster, and do broadcast, we wanted to make better events for them. Better prize pools, fair wages, and wages that are actually paid and paid on time. More and better storytelling content about the women competitors. Leveling up the production to make it feel like a top-tier event and not a “sideshow.
The beginning of Raidiant
Raidiant was first launched in August 2020 and has grown significantly since then. From the platform’s launch, Raidiant produced and hosted a wide variety of events. Sapphire talks about some of the first projects done by Raidiant and how the team executed them:
Our first major event was producing a single VCT Game Changers NA event. Including the two years prior and the year after, that was the single most watched VCT Game Changers NA event to date. We made more content about teams. We brought in influencers as co-streamers with strong reach. We mailed gift bags to each one of the 250+ competitors. We were able to get VCT Game Changers NA broadcast on the front page of Twitch. Our next major event was the Raidiant Rocket League Series, the highest prize pool, participation and viewership for any women’s Rocket League event in history. We produced the caster/analyst desk in Los Angeles on a large XR stage. We also sent personalized jerseys and gifts to each competitor from North America and Europe.
Raidiant’s first projects and challenges
Of course, every project comes with its own unique set of challenges. As an industry veteran, SapphiRe explains these challenges and what helped them overcome them.
The obstacles were that we were simply doing this for the first time and trying to understand all it takes to make these events happen. Fortunately, we had the experience of simply being former competitors ourselves. We knew what worked well as players and knew what we didn’t like or what could be improved. We put ourselves in the minds of the players and fans to make a better product. Through those two events, we demonstrated our strong ability to produce these types of events and soon after had requests from publishers like Activision Blizzard to work on their exciting new program, Calling All Heroes.
Raidiant’s key achievements
Raidiant has established a remarkable track record in these four years with unique events, collaborations, and tournaments. Heather ‘SapphiRe’ Garozzo highlights some of the most critical milestones in the platform’s growth.
There’s a number of milestones that stand out – when we can work with a new game publisher, when we can welcome a new brand into esports when we host IRL events where we’re introducing tens of thousands of people to Raidiant, and any time we can have a “first in esports,” it makes me especially proud.
We get to work on publisher-supported events like Star Chasers Showdown (Psyonix / Epic Games), VCT Game Changers (Riot Games), Calling All Heroes (Activision Blizzard), and Overwatch Collegiate (Activision Blizzard). We’ve welcomed new brands to either esports or to the women’s gaming space, like Ally, Pura Vida, be quiet!, Chipotle, Noble Chairs among others. We served as a founding partner and produced The Milk Cup, the first-ever women’s Fortnite LAN with the largest prize pool for a women’s Fortnite event to date – $250,000 – this was a truly remarkable feat and will pave the way for so many future Raidiant operated LAN events.
After four years of fantastic work, Raidiant continues to promote inclusion and diversity in the esports world. The future of Raidiant, just like its original inspiration, lies in creating a space for women in esports. The data that shows rising numbers of women in esports with each passing year gives us hope. We can be hopeful that Raidiant and other platforms alike are changing the industry demographic one day at a time.
The original inspiration of Raidiant was to create better opportunities for women so that, eventually, there would be equal representation. Equal representation in competition, in production, in the gaming workforce. I want to hit “delete” on that in many years. I don’t want there to have to be a need for women’s mentorship, women’s only events, etc. I want women to be welcomed and represented equally. However, I hope that Raidiant can be a way to work with all major esports publishers on driving us towards that path. Many titles have massive women audiences but are incredibly underserved or not being addressed. I hope we can help be a guiding light so that we can increase representation across each game’s ecosystem.