How much SA’s gamers earn and spend on gaming

Recently MyGaming conducted a survey asking South Africa’s gamers a variety of questions relating to their gaming hobby.

With a sample of 1045 responses, we are now getting a good general picture of the demographics and habits of the high-end SA gaming market.

Age Distribution

Of the sample, 93.89% were male and 4.97%  female, with 1.15% leaving no answer.

The largest age group is the 25 to 30 bracket, comprising 39.92% of the sample. Below is a table displaying the age distribution.

Age group	Percentage
Under 18	2.10%
18 to 21	7.16%
21 to 24	17.77%
25 to 30	39.92%
31 to 34	17.77%
35 to 40	8.98%
41 to 44	4.01%
45 to 50	1.24%
Over 50	0.67%
No answer	0.38%

Income and spending habits

Gaming isn’t an inexpensive hobby – we asked survey participants to estimate the total monthly income of all household members before tax.

We also asked for an estimate of their monthly spend on gaming-related purchases (games, hardware, events, clothing, paraphernalia, etc). The results of these questions are shown in the tables below.

Respondents estimated household income (total income of all household members before tax)	Percentage
Under R10,000	9.07%
Between R10,000 and R20,000	20.34%
Between R20,000 and R30,000	19.10%
Between R30,000 and R40,000	11.65%
Between R40,000 and R50,000	8.40%
Between R50,000 and R60,000	6.11%
Between R60,000 and R70,000	4.78%
Over R70,000	10.12%
No answer	10.41%

Average monthly spend on gaming-related purchases	Percentage
Less than R500	45.27%
Between R500 and R1000	38.11%
Between R1000 and R1500	8.98%
Between R1500 and R2000	2.77%
Between R2000 and R2500	0.67%
More than R2500	1.53%
No answer	2.67%

Coupled with the cost of keeping oneself connected to the various online services that are all but a necessity for gaming these days, it is clear that SA’s gamers aren’t shy about spending on their pastime each month.

We wanted to find out where this gaming spend was going, and asked participants from where they were getting their games. The responses are summarized below. The percentage is of the total sample of 1045, and it exceeds 100% because this was a multiple choice question.

Where SA’s gamers buy their games	Percentage
Brick and mortar shops (new)	56.83%
Online shops (new)	82.33%
From friends (second hand)	16.91%
Classifieds (second hand)	18.24%
Other (other)	7.45%

Other survey results

Previously we stated that ADSL is the most popular broadband connection type among SA’s gamers. ADSL 4/10Mbps connections were used by 38.66% of the sample; ADSL 1Mbps by 23.35%; and ADSL 384kbps by 15.79%.

Of the total survey participants, 77.84% were ADSL users. We asked them which ADSL ISPs they use, indicating the most popular ISP among SA’s high-end gamers. The results were published in this article: Most popular ADSL ISP among gamers.

It is also interesting to note that of the total sample, 78.66% of the survey participants play online games, while 77.84% were ADSL users. This may indicate that the other types of internet connection used by survey participants aren’t popular for online gaming purposes. These connection types included 3G data services from mobile operators, iBurst, and Neotel. More information on that topic can be found in this article: SA gamers’ broadband connection of choice.

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Tags: ADSL ISP, gaming stats, headline, MyGaming survey, SA gaming market