Esports in Ukraine is experiencing a boom. Views are growing, big investments are coming in, and old stereotypes — about «games for schoolchildren» and geeks in basements — are rapidly collapsing. dev.ua has collected the main insights from the esports panel at the SBC Summit Ukraine 2025.
Esports in Ukraine is experiencing a boom. Views are growing, big investments are coming in, and old stereotypes — about «games for schoolchildren» and geeks in basements — are rapidly collapsing. dev.ua has collected the main insights from the esports panel at the SBC Summit Ukraine 2025.
The main shock is the numbers. Viktor Pronyakin from the analytical service Esports Charts noted: in 2024, the global esports audience spent more than 3 billion hours watching matches. Ukraine is no exception: in the first quarter of 2025, Ukrainian-language broadcasts collected 6 million hours of viewing. For comparison, in 2022 this figure was 168 thousand hours.
«This is no longer just a niche movement. This is a media industry», — says Pronyakin.
Serhiy Mishchenko, CEO of GGBET UA, destroys several myths at once. The first: supposedly esports is exclusively for teenagers. But GGBET does not allow users under 21, and even so, the majority of the service’s audience is people aged 30–40. The second myth is that esports viewers are not interested in «real» sports. According to the platform, 74% of users who bet on Dota 2 or CS2 also actively bet on football.
And most importantly: in 2024, Counter-Strike 2 ranked fourth among all sports in terms of betting volume. It is second only to football, and slightly to basketball and tennis. Dota 2 is in the top 10.
Vitaliy Volochay (v1lat), one of the most famous commentators on the Ukrainian Dota scene, compares the numbers. For example, the recent Ukrainian Cup final between Dynamo and Shakhtar drew 220,000 simultaneous viewers on YouTube. The match between these teams in the UPL had 700,000 views.
But the final of the esports major featuring NAVI took third place among all broadcasts — and beat most football events.
Volochay draws attention: classic sports in Ukraine have 6-8 peaks per year — when the national football team performs, when Usyk fights or Moguchykh jumps (then the ratings can really peak at 150-200 thousand viewers). «And e-sports — peak events almost every month,» explains Volochay. And he adds: everyone already has mobile games on their phones. «Theoretically, you are already an e-sportsman,» he ironically says.
In 2024, more than $236 million was played in tournaments. Among the high-profile deals:
Andriy Hryshchenko from UESF talks more about the infrastructure. It is still in the process of formation, but there is already something to brag about. For example, amateur tournaments in the mobile game Brawl Stars can gather up to 1,600 teams, that is, more than 5,000 participants — and this is only in one discipline. Ukraine is in the world’s top 4 in terms of the number of Brawl Stars players.
The Ukrainian Cybersports Federation is also working on institutionalizing the industry: a cybersports department has already been created at the National University of Ukrainian Football Federation (Anfisa), and the first cybersports class is planned to open in the Kyiv Youth and Sports School soon.
A separate vector is the social adaptation of veterans. Many servicemen, in particular from the Azov and Third Assault units, regularly participate in evening CS matches via Discord. «This is already part of rehabilitation, and we are incorporating this experience into future projects,» says Hryshchenko.
