Figures that show just how popular gaming has become

Many adults who are between the ages of 20 and 50 grew up playing video games, but few may have anticipated just how big gaming would become by the time they reached adulthood. The popularity of gaming has only grown since today's 40somethings were children, and that popularity is reflected in a host of eye-popping statistics.

· 2.7 billion: That's the number of gamers across the globe as of 2019, according to data from the games market insights and analytics experts at NewZoo. To put that in perspective, data from the U.S. Census Bureau around the end of 2020 indicated that the global population at that time was right around 7.7 billion. That means roughly 35 percent of the global population qualifies as gamers.

· $159 billion: The amount NewZoo estimates gamers will spend on gaming in 2020.

· 48 percent: That's the video gaming market share of the Asia Pacific region. The second highest market share belongs to North America, which accounts for 19 percent of global video game industry revenue.

· 12.3 percent: This figure represents the year-on-year market share growth rate in Western Europe from 2018 to 2019. That's the highest such growth rate of any region in the world during that span.

· 646 million: The estimated number of esports viewers by 2023, according to data from Statista. Esports is generally defined as the competitions featuring gamers competing against one another. Statista notes that as recently as 2017 esports viewership totaled 335 million. That means the popularity of esports is likely to double in terms of viewership in the six-year period between 2017 and 2023.