Esports watchers average 32.7 hours of gaming per week versus 25.0 for non-watchers, a 31% gap that holds across all four markets. Brazil and China watchers log the heaviest sessions.
This pattern reinforces that viewership is not a passive habit layered on top of casual play; it tracks with deeper, more habitual gaming engagement overall.
Source: IDG Gamer Gauge Wave 6 is IDG Intelligence’s sixth global quantitative study of Gen Z gamers, covering 3,507 Gen Z participants across the US, Germany, China, and Brazil from November 2025 to January 2026. This white paper isolates on respondents that watch esports and reads every other behavior against it. The full report offers key datapoints on:
Demographics — viewership by different Gen Z age bands, gender skew by market, and market/country.
Devices & platforms — device ownership and usage (smartphone, PC/laptop, console) by market, plus number of devices/platforms played on.
Discovery & media consumption — game discovery channels (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram) and SVOD subscriptions (Netflix, Amazon Prime).
Esports viewership & viewing intensity — share of surveyed Gen Z gamers who watch esports by market; weekly hours watched; watcher-vs-non-watcher framing on nearly every metric.
Gameplay preferences & psychographics — what players prioritize (gameplay mechanics vs. narrative depth) and personality trait scores (Competition, Achievement, Mastery, Extroversion, Immersion).
Gaming intensity — average weekly gaming hours (esports watchers vs. non-watchers), by market.
Genre engagement — genres played monthly, ranked Top 10 per market
Monetization & spending — monthly microtransaction/DLC spend bands, preferred spend models (premium, subscription, free-to-play with ads), and primary spend drivers.
Titles followed — top esports titles per market (e.g. Apex Legends, League of Legends, Valorant, Honor of Kings).
Streaming & content behavior — streaming platform usage (Twitch, YouTube, Huya, Douyu), content-sharing frequency, and UGC formats watched and produced.
“IDG is one of our go-to partners for tackling some of the biggest challenges we face in our industry. They are objective, independent experts, and they have been a trusted advisor and resource for Activision for over 20 years. We work with IDG across multiple areas and levels, and we greatly value the partnership.”
Activision
“IDG is one of the most insightful and forward-thinking research firms in our industry. Their unique ability to expertly analyze trends that capture paradigm shifts in emerging technologies, business models and consumerism is what has made them such a valued longstanding partner of our organization.”
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.
“Intelligence is about answering two very important questions; why and what next? Over the last 5 years we’ve partnered with Yoshio and the IDG team, we’ve worked together in high level strategy products to local tactical engagements helping fuel the growth for Wargaming and enabling my team to focus on implementing the how. IDG has consistently delivered insight around trends driving the industry, competitive intensity in exploratory markets, and easy to understand data visualizations unpacking complex metrics in bite size form.”
Wargaming
“Milestone has been working with IDG for many years, and the level of collaboration could not be higher. The support provided by the company has played a role of great value over time: their quarterly reports are a fundamental tool to analyze trends, preferences and users’ tastes and they provide very good support for our strategic decisions. In addition to periodic analysis, Milestone also works with IDG for ad hoc evaluations, always managing to have precise, rapid and extremely useful answers for our business. IDG has even been an incredible supporter for us in looking for a partner in the US, and they followed up with us step-by-step with enthusiasm and dedication. We will be always grateful to Anton, Yoshio and the whole IDG team.”
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager
1 minute
_gid
ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity
24 hours
_gali
Used by Google Analytics to determine which links on a page are being clicked
30 seconds
_ga
ID used to identify users
2 years
__utmx
Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test.
18 months
__utmv
Contains custom information set by the web developer via the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated every time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
2 years after last activity
__utmz
Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server
6 months after last activity
_gac_
Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together.
90 days
__utmc
Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session.
End of session (browser)
__utmb
Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
30 minutes after last activity
__utmt
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests
10 minutes
__utma
ID used to identify users and sessions
2 years after last activity
SourceBuster is used by WooCommerce for order attribution based on user source.
Name
Description
Duration
sbjs_migrations
Technical data to help with migrations between different versions of the tracking feature
session
sbjs_current_add
Timestamp, referring URL, and entry page for your visitor’s current visit to your store
session
sbjs_first_add
Timestamp, referring URL, and entry page for your visitor’s first visit to your store (only applicable if the visitor returns before the session expires)
session
sbjs_current
Traffic origin information for the visitor’s current visit to your store
session
sbjs_first
Traffic origin information for the visitor’s first visit to your store (only applicable if the visitor returns before the session expires)
session
sbjs_udata
Information about the visitor’s user agent, such as IP, the browser, and the device type
session
sbjs_session
The number of page views in this session and the current page path
