This Market Is Bigger Than Esports, and Amazon Already Has a Slice

In recent years, video games have sort of broken the stereotype of the loner teenager cooped up in his or her room all day twiddling thumbs on a controller. And, yes, you have to mention "her" -- that's another stereotype broken. As you'll read about in this article, there are almost as many women as men interested in video games. In fact, 41% of gamers are female. Also, 67% of gamers 13 and older play games to be social, according to a study by Nielsen.

This is reflected by the tens of millions of gamers tuning in to watch others play games on Amazon.com's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Twitch.tv -- a social network for gamers -- which makes Amazon a crucial gateway to the rapidly growing esports market, as well as a crucial bridge for advertisers to connect with cord-cutting millennials.

It might seem strange why anyone would want to sit around and watch someone else play video games -- but trust me, in some ways it is more fun than playing games yourself. What's known as the Game Video Content (GVC) market doesn't get as much attention as esports, but it's much bigger than the $696 million esports market, and it's growing just as fast.

Source: Fool.com