Shanghai surpasses Los Angeles for top spot in the rankings of global esports cities released by a team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
The rankings are the second edition of an evaluation of global cities dedicated to developing the esports industry, with the first edition released in 2021, in which Los Angeles, Shanghai, Paris, Beijing and Berlin took first to fifth places.
The cities were evaluated in five aspects, namely industry ecosystem, infrastructure, matches, clubs, and social influence.
This year’s rankings included 20 cities, with five new entries: Shenzhen, Riyadh, Jakarta, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. In the new rankings, Shanghai topped with 100 points, while Los Angeles was in second place with 93.4 points.
Beijing overtook Paris for third place, with Berlin remaining fifth. Seoul, Singapore, Seattle, Atlanta and Riyadh ranked sixth to tenth.
Shanghai took first place in the sub-indicator rankings for infrastructure, tournaments organized and clubs. As the team discovered, Shanghai had 259 stadiums by the end of August, including 56 for esports, while Los Angeles had 236 and 62, respectively.
Shanghai also had 13 esports clubs ranked among the world’s top 100 and nine of the world’s top 100 esports athletes, while Los Angeles had 11 and 5, respectively.
Shanghai has been promoting the development of the esports industry in recent years. Since it introduced 50 measures in 2017 to promote the cultural and creative industries, the city has stepped up its efforts in building esports-related infrastructure, competition venues and industrial clusters.
The biggest challenge for the further development of esports in Shanghai remained its relatively weak social influence, in which it ranked seventh while Los Angeles was top, according to the team.
The metric for societal impact encapsulates a myriad of parameters including, but not limited to, the volume of esports-related online search queries originating from the city, the frequency of media news coverage, and the resonance within social media platforms.
