Analysis of eSports as a commercial activity

  • Received April 10, 2017;
    Accepted January 17, 2018;
    Published March 5, 2018
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.16(1).2018.20
  • Article Info
    Volume 16 2018, Issue #1, pp. 207-213
  • TO CITE АНОТАЦІЯ
  • Cited by
    25 articles
  • 3752 Views
  • 947 Downloads

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The article deals with eSports as a perspective kind of commercial activity. The research urgency is determined by the fact that, given the active increase of eSports market with growth rates of more than 30% per year, the types of commercial activities in this field and in scientific papers are not studied in an adequate degree.

The purpose of the article is to evaluate the commercial activity development in eSports and to determine the perspectives for its further growth in Ukraine. In order to determine the key types of commercial activity in eSports, the main sources of revenue in this area compared to sports were investigated, which showed a large unrealized potential for increasing revenues from the sale of tickets to competitions, the realization of broadcasting rights and merchandising. The study also showed that the largest number of income sources in eSports is at the stage of cyber-tournaments, which can be explained by a large consumer audience at this stage. However, unlike the esports world practice, computer game producers and well-known manufacturers of consumer goods in Ukraine do not finance domestic competitions, and, therefore, this stage of commercial activity remains at a low level. In modern conditions, among the types of eSports activities in Ukraine, only the computer games production and the cyber-racers game are properly developed.

According to authors, to improve the eSports development in Ukraine, creating the national system of regular eSports competitions is needed, which will form the basis for the development of most types of commercial activities that are part of the cyber-tournaments. To do this, one needs to create appropriate platforms, as well as improve communications with fans in social networks and at amateur competitions. All this will make eSports a highly profitable business in Ukraine.

view full abstract hide full abstract
    • Table 1. Dynamics of number of eSports-related publications for 2001–2017 (for 17 years of the 21st century)
    • Table 2. Revenue estimates in sports and eSports
    • Table 3. Sources of income according to the commercial activity stages in eSports
    • Table 4. Useful effects of eSports by fields of activity
    • Table 5. Estimation of the development level commercial activity in eSports in Ukraine according to their stages