Esports Scholarship Review: Synthesis, Contributions, and Future Research

Abstract

Esports, or competitive video gaming competitions, bring together aspects of sports, business, leisure, technology, and digital media, appealing to academics across multiple disciplines. Yet, esports scholarship remains highly fragmented, with scholars operating within traditional academic silos and forgoing opportunities to build on esports’ interdisciplinary nature. The purpose of this integrative review is to synthesize esports scholarship from across disciplines, identify critical scholarly issues, and develop a pragmatic, interdisciplinary research agenda. We find that extant esports scholarship is categorized by literature seeking to conceptualize and legitimize esports via sport parallels, with a focus on the consumers and culture of esports. Scholarly issues include researchers examining esports in their respective academic silos, omitting opportunities to connect conceptually similar streams of literature. Overall, we synthesize esports scholarship, bridge chasms between disjointed streams of literature, and outline a pragmatic research agenda which could benefit from interdisciplinary inquiries based on a shared understanding of esports.

Esports Fan Engagement: A Comparison of PC and Console Esports Team Fans

“…Esports incorporate elements from multiple areas (e.g., sport, business, leisure, information technology, management, hospitality, etc.) and their study will require scholars to understand not only their similarities with other disciplines, but their distinctive aspects as well (Pizzo et al, 2022b). This sentiment is echoed in our findings, as many sport fan engagement constructs were not directly applicable to esports team fans.…”

“…Moving forward, scholars should continue to identify various other dynamics that influence esports related consumption, as well as further distinguish and delineate between esports and video gaming. In doing so, the growing academic and media attention given to esports can better target the needs of a rapidly growing industry and help sustain its growth and stability (Pizzo et al, 2022b).…”

Engagement and consumption behavior of eSports gamers

“…Consumers that experience higher engagement with an entity are more likely to partake in communities to increase their familiarity with the entity and its uses, get acquainted with other users and disseminate personal experiences and knowledge among the community members (Schau et al, 2009). As a result, the association that a member of a particular community develops with an activity engenders community engagement (Pizzo et al, 2022). In eSports, a person's need to integrate socially into a community is considered to be a source of extrinsic need gratification, much like the utility gained from social needs (Corredor, 2018).…”

Introduction: State of Literature Special Issue

“…In their timely piece, Singer et al (2022) call attention to how anti-Blackness has pervaded the academy, explore the missed opportunities in sport management, and provide several action items to undo anti-Blackness in our field. Pizzo et al (2022) provide a synthesis of the ever-growing esports industry and offer an agenda for future research with an emphasis on interdisciplinary work. Sveinson et al (2022) take an innovative look at women in the sport industry with a mesolevel analysis and the invisible labors of women and draw upon Bohnet's (2015) DESIGN frame to propose future areas of research.…”