Analysis of Various Factors That Impact Attitudes Toward Esports

Analysis of Various Factors That Impact Attitudes Toward ESports581025390525
Group 1
Alexander Backiel, Antonio Fedd, Brian Gomes, Keith Woods, Kyle Shatto, and Peiyao Yu
Research in Sport & Recreation
Spring 2020
Executive Summary
So in this report you will read about how eSports is considered a sport and it will outline a different number of reasons. Also you will learn how people's interactions with gaming impacts their feelings towards eSports. The purpose of our study is to monitor the amount of time people spend on the game and if they are in eSports or not, to see if age, gender, and race played a part in people's feelings toward eSports and its competitions. This study contributes to our current knowledge because we know people of different ages, races, and gender who play games and participate in eSports and some that don't so we decided to do this study. Also, we wanted to know their feelings on if eSports was a real sport or not. We used a convenience sample for a survey we completed and the key findings were found within the survey when we asked the question about people’s experience while playing video games. This is useful in the sports industry because people want to know a definite answer to this question and we feel our studies can lean them toward an answer someway.
Introduction:
What makes a sport, a sport? Is it the competitive atmosphere of the game? Is it the athletic nature a sport brings? Regardless of the definition, a substantial percentage of the population have difficulties considering, “eSports”, sports. While it is entirely understandable that people, especially those of older generations, underestimate the power of eSports, it is a relatively untapped market that has the potential to reel in billions of dollars in revenue. Even though it is a new industry, it is already seeing success around the world. This rapid growth has captured the eyes of top sport media outlets such as ESPN and is slated to get some airtime alongside traditional sports leagues such as the NBA or NFL. What remains unknown is how the people feel in regards to the technicality of including eSports with traditional, physical sports.
Since the concept of eSports is relatively new, certain marketing strategies are being implemented to widen their target audience. The demographic of the eSports market is overwhelmingly young. In order for it to grow to the stature of traditional big market sports, it needs to find a way to become multidimensional. Capturing the eyes of older generations is the challenging task at hand. What kind of marketing strategies can appeal to the older demographic in a way that can effectively draw them in? Also, what needs to be done in order to make them feel included in something they’ve likely never seen before? Garnering respect for eSports is priority number one in order for this industry to grow.
We will be doing a study that will analyze the attitudes of people from a wide range of different backgrounds regarding eSports. This will tell us the current standing of eSports in terms of population outreach and the attitudinal barriers that stand in the way. Knowing the current standing is the first step of learning the market potential for eSports.
Conceptual Overview:
The integration of eSports into mainstream sports culture has been a focal point of importance for the sports management industry, mainly due to the recent success ESports has garnered through a desire for a new and unique sporting experience. Because of its recent success, ESports has solidified itself out as another form of sport competition. Top ESports teams have renowned sponsors such as Coca-Cola, Comcast Xfinity, and Red bull (Meola 2018), which shows ESports legitimacy and its significance to the sports industry. These well-known sponsors are affiliated with sports such as Nascar. The mass amount of company sponsors supporting ESports teams overshadows the several sponsors that actually deal with the sports industry. The support from these company sponsors exhibits the importance of ESports tournaments/competitions.
Right now, there is a lot of speculation on the direct relation of ESports to sports because a lot of people argue whether or not ESports should even be considered a real sports competition because of the lack of energy/physicality in the competitions.
One undeniable truth is that we live in a digital age where technology is constantly evolving. This constant advancement of technology will only allow ESports to grow and get even bigger. This is because with better technology, video game companies are going to be able to create better and more advanced games than before. The onset of more advanced games will mean that the difficulty of gaming will go up, forcing ESports athletes to evolve their skill level and become more competitively invested in the sport, which will ultimately allow ESports to put out a better product. Regardless of whether or not people support or disregard ESports, one sure thing is that as long as technology evolves and the games get more advanced, so will the gaming. Also, for people working in the sports industry you can dislike eSports or not, but you would be doing yourself a disservice if you ignored the fact that it brings in a lot of money and has an audience size comparable to traditional sports.
Another aspect of technology that allows eSports to continue growing is the heavy use of various social platforms. Tons of people use social platforms, especially the younger generations and is why they generally have a more positive outlook and are more accepting of eSports as a career. “…the popularity of live streaming sites (e.g., Twitch, Youtube Gaming channel) further promotes such a spectatorship and interactions between the spectator and the competitor… (Freeman, 2017). With platforms like Twitch, YouTube and Mixer people can not only livestream themselves playing games, but also communicate via chat box with everybody who is watching them from anywhere in the world. ESports was very quick to accept these platforms as they would live stream matches on them for everyone to watch, similar to how traditional sports are shown on tv. These matches get millions of views which shows that people are willing to watch eSports if you give them the chance. An eSports semi-final match was even able to sell out one of the most famous arenas in America, Madison Square Garden, so audience is clearly not an issue (Freeman, 2017).
One thing that is clear is the type of audience present at eSports events. As mentioned earlier the younger generations are mainly the ones who are accepting of eSports. Older generations lived in a time where video games were not even really a thing, so it makes sense that they would be more skeptical or have negative opinions about it. It simply doesn’t fit their traditional view of a job, because at one-point gaming was just something you did in your free time as a kid. But younger generations who grew up in more of a digital world, aren’t as surprised because they have been around technology for most of their lives. In a study conducted “The largest group of eSports fans are reportedly in the 25-34 age bracket, with their average age being 31. The alleged second-largest age bracket is the 18-24 range…” (Te, 2017). As we can see the audience age for eSports is extremely young, and something to take note is that the majority of the audience falls in the millennials and Generation Z age demographic. This is important because these two generations use social platforms the most, so the idea of eSports isn’t far fetched for them because their lives are already consumed by daily technology. However, when you compare the average age of the eSports audience to traditional sports, you really start to see the disconnect. In a study conducted in 2016, the average age of an MLB viewer was 57, NFL was 50 and NBA was 42. (Notte, 2017). When looking at all the data it’s clear that older generations are not into eSports as much as traditional sports. The main reason you could say is that eSports is very technology based, and so older people who are not into technology as much as millennials, Gen. Z and any younger generation, just wouldn’t be that interested or understand the concept of eSports.
In particular the analysis above leads us to these various research questions:
1 Is there a difference in attitudes about eSports based on someone’s age?
2 How does a person’s attitudes about eSports change based on if they played or play video games?
3 Is there a difference in attitudes about eSports based on someone’s gender?
Methods
We are going to take the quantitative approach to examine observations about people's attitude/feelings toward eSports as a whole. We plan to focus on how people view eSports like is it a sport or not, and in their opinion how digital social media impacts eSports. We are going to analyze if people view eSports as being a positive influence on the local economy and if it is a positive to a child’s social development.
Sampling
For our survey we are going to use a convenience sample. We are going to administer our survey to the people that are around us and to the people who we see that are willing to take the survey. A convenience sample seems most appropriate for this project because spreading the survey to people in such a large city like Philadelphia would take too much time and would cost us way too much money. Using a convenience sample we are still going to be able to get honest answers and we may be able to get results that may raise a question.
Although we may not get a wide variety of people taking the survey, we are going to get som...