Global pandemic compels sport to move to esports: understanding from brand extension perspective

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 outbreak leads to the sudden lockdown of sports businesses across the world. Due to the difficulty of generating sports content as usual amid the global pandemic, some sports organizations around the world, resort to esports. Concretely, sports organizations let their professional athletes compete virtually in video games to produce competitive entertainment for the audience. Such “mixed” competitive entertainment attracts a high spectatorship and significant social media attention. This commentary seeks to provide a research-based explanation of the phenomenon and predict future developments.

KEYWORDS:

• Global pandemic
• sports
• brand extension
• esports

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by GRF grant number 11610419 from the HKSAR's Research Grants Council.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by General Research Fund [grant number 11610419] from the Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, Hong Kong.