The esports sphere has been steadily growing since the early 2000s. Now, in 2024, the scene is bigger than ever before with the rise of several streaming platforms and strong standalone tournament circuits. As with any community, some of them tend to fly under the radar.
Five smaller esports you should follow in 2024
With popular MOBAs and FPS games all over the scene, many well-crafted games with fun communities tend to go unnoticed. Most of them have a surprisingly dedicated fanbase that sticks true to the game and its players. We feel like these esports don’t get the attention they deserve and more people would follow their communities if they were made aware of their existence in 2024.
On that note, here are five underrated esports to follow in 2024.
Age of Empires
Once touted as the king of real-time strategy games, the Age of Empires series has been through a tumultuous couple of decades. Age of Empires 2 ruled the strategy game genre alongside popular entries like Warcraft 3 and Starcraft. Eventually, the RTS genre got pushed aside in favor of FPS games that largely dominated the esports scene since the early 2010s.
With remakes such as Age of Empires 2 HD Edition and the Definitive Edition, the series saw a resurgence in popularity. This led to several tournaments throughout the years with events such as the Hidden Cup and Nili’s Apartment Cup showcasing the game’s best players in 2024.
The series’ popularity only rose further with the launch of Age of Empires 4 in Oct. 2021, bringing in fresh new viewers and returning veterans. The Sultans Ascend expansion made the game more competitive with new playable civilizations. The series overall held strong at a peak viewership of over 70,000 viewers in 2024.
Magic: The Gathering
This game is a digital adaptation of the original Magic: The Gathering series of card games, which has had a rich history of competitive tabletop tournaments since 1994. In 2018, Wizards of the Coast, the creators of MTG, announced their entry into the esports scene, with MTG: Arena to follow the next year.
During the game’s first year of existence, WotC provided a $10 million prize pool to be distributed among the tournaments held that year. The game’s resurgence brought a lot of eyes to the MTG competitive scene, but it was short-lived.
In 2021, WotC disbanded their professional MTG league, leaving only regional and local tournaments in the esports scene, but in 2023 MTG slowly began to regain its popularity with events such as the Magic World Championship garnering 30,000 peak viewers.
Quake Champions
With FPS games on the rise since the early 2000s, there were a few series that defined the genre. While games like Call of Duty were still finding their footing, the Quake series was already quite well-established in the genre. Quake 3 Arena and the sequel Quake 4 dominated the arcade FPS sphere until the series went into a steady decline after the likes of CoD and CS:GO rose past the twitch shooter.
The series returned with Quake Champions in 2017 in its early access phase. From 2018 onwards, the game became fully free to play, with the full version released in 2022. Since its release, Quake Champions has been received positively by old and new players; however, it has proven to be an underrated arcade shooter in the esports scene.
Quake Champions has pulled in a peak viewership of over 30,000 viewers with a combined prize pool of close to $4 million spread out over tournaments like KeenCon Team Series and Project Velocity. The Quake Champions esports scene has slowly started to grow in the first quarter of 2024 and is a game that should be on your radar if you are into upcoming competitive shooters.
Smite
The MOBA genre spread like wildfire in the early 2010s. Players and viewers alike credit Warcraft 3 as the inspiration for the genre, eventually spawning games like League of Legends and Dota 2. As well-known as these games are in the esports scene, some MOBA games tend to fly under the radar, and Smite is one of them.
Initially released in 2014 by Titan Forge Games, Smite brought the chaos of the MOBA genre to the battlefield with a divine twist. Smite introduced several mythological creatures and heroes from different cultures, complete with mythologically-accurate skills. The game started with a lot of promise, but as is the case with most multiplayer games, its popularity started to dwindle.
The competitive scene was more robust, with the game boasting a total prize pool of over $11 million over the years. At its peak, Smite pulled in over 134,000 viewers to watch tournaments such as the Smite World Championship and Smite Masters. The game still pulls in a good viewership in 2024 and now is a good time to get on board if you are a fan of creative MOBA games.
Super Smash Bros
Long-running series like Tekken, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat dominate the fighting game genre. One of the older series in the fighting genre is Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros, a series that originated in 1999 and is still going strong in 2024.
The most popular entries in the series by far are Super Smash Bros Melee and Super Smash Bros Ultimate, the latter of which is still featured in high-profile tournaments today. Events such as Genesis X Ultimate and Genesis X Melee pulled in viewership of close to 100,000 and 70,000 viewers respectively, showcasing a renewed interest from the fanbase in 2024.
While Super Smash Bros has always had a robust community of dedicated players, what makes this game underrated is its competition. The series has consistently pulled in viewers with a peak viewership of over 245,000 for its major tournaments. The prize pool for these tournaments has reached over $4 million spread out over the last few years of competitive events.
