Esports Governance: Exploring Stakeholder Dynamics

Esports is a rapidly growing industry. However, the unidentifiable governance structure of the industry has contributed to a number of integrity-eroding activities. By exploring esports stakeholder dynamics, this paper answers the question, “Is the esports governance model sustainable?” Data were so...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2020-10, Vol.12 (19), p.8270
Main Authors: Peng, Qi, Dickson, Geoff, Scelles, Nicolas, Grix, Jonathan, Brannagan, Paul Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil society
Dependency theory
Ecosystems
Evolution
Informal economy
Legitimacy
Nonprofit organizations
Rationality
Regulation
Social impact
Stakeholders
Sustainability
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Summary:Esports is a rapidly growing industry. However, the unidentifiable governance structure of the industry has contributed to a number of integrity-eroding activities. By exploring esports stakeholder dynamics, this paper answers the question, “Is the esports governance model sustainable?” Data were sourced from documentation, focus groups (N = 3) and semi-structured interviews (N = 6). Thematic analysis was conducted using Nvivo. The findings suggest that (1) the current esports governance framework features some attributes of the “lead organisation-governed network”, with the power residing mainly in game publishers; (2) the rising power of other stakeholders in the network seeking to address integrity issues has caused fragmentation of the esports governance framework; (3) esports governance is evolving towards a network administration organisation (NAO) model. Such evolution has a few challenges—most notably, the compliance of game publishers. Given the social impact of the integrity issues, governments should play a main role in facilitating a NAO model.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su12198270