Major Croatian telecom A1 and the local gaming industry association on Wednesday the 10th season of the largest regional e-sports competition, the Adria League, which will take place between September and November, state news agency Hina said.

According to latest estimates the Croatian gaming industry generates an annual revenue of more than 500 million kuna (€67 million).

“Since 2019 the revenues of ten largest gaming companies in Croatia have increased from 274 million (€36 million) in 2019 to 446 million (€59 million) in 2021. If other companies are added to them – and there are around 100 businesses which specialize in game development – these revenues amount to more than 500 million kuna,” the secretary of the Croatian Gaming Cluster, Aleksandar Gavrilovic, said.

The growth of the industry is definitely facilitated by the great interest in computer games, the popularity of Croatian computer games in the world, as well as many national and international e-sports competitions, which mostly offer generous prize money.

Hina did not name any particular game as an example of this.

Gavrilovic said that there were around 70 game development companies in Croatia. In 2019 businesses in that industry employed around 230 people and in 2021 their number rose to more than 500. “When collaborations and people who are occasionally involved in game development are added to that, the number of people involved in the making of computer games in Croatia exceeds 1,000,” he said.

Among them are also foreign nationals, notably data analysts, web and game designers and programmers, who are in short supply in Croatia. “This is partly due to emigration and partly because there are still no education programmes for those specialist skills and professions,” Gavrilovic said.

Gavrilovic noted that gaming companies in Croatia mostly export their products to foreign markets, predominantly to the United States and China.

Marijana Zagorac of A1 said that her company had been involved in the regional Adria League since 2019, which she described as a contributor to teaching young generations to use the Internet and enjoy gaming responsibly.

“This is a successful project because more than 13,000 domestic and international players have passed through the league over the last five years, competing for prize money totaling 1.2 million kuna (€160,000), and we also recorded more than 80 million visits to our website from all over the world,” Zagorac said.

Currently registration is underway for the 10th season of the league, which comes with a 100,000 kuna (€13,000) prize fund.

(€1 = 7.51 kuna)