Shaping a Regional Offline eSports Market: Understanding How Jönköping, the ‘City of DreamHack’, Takes URL to IRL

ABSTRACT

Globally, eSports is growing in influence in media. However, it represents a unique phenomenon in the modern mediascape as it is expanding beyond the online digital world and becoming interwoven in the offline, physical world. Jönköping, a mid-sized Swedish city that hosts the DreamHack winter and summer events, provides the setting for how this offline context is being facilitated and shaped to maximize the benefits of eSports’ increasing cultural relevance and value. By conceptualizing the local eSports scene as a market, this article synthesizes 17 interviews with local actors to answer the question: What offline actions do actors engage in to facilitate and shape the local eSports market? This article provides actionable insights from a strategic media management perspective that can enable others to engage with and develop local offline eSports markets to provide a platform for media creation.

Introduction

The rise of eSports represents a rapidly emerging market that is changing how we think about the global media landscape in terms of how it is consumed, shared, created and monetized. Spectating and participation within the eSports community is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon where motivations to consume go beyond that of traditional sports (Hamari & Sjöblom, 2017). The characteristics of being both global and local at the same time have been a driver of the success and growth of eSport (Scholz & Stein, 2017; Taylor, 2012). While other media industries continue to become more digital and globalized, eSport is moving toward greater levels of being analogue and regional (Scholz, 2019) indicating a working model of utilizing digitization in a non-digital and regional context which can be seen as a unique phenomenon in the modern mediascape that is evidenced through demonstrable economic impact for host cities (Duran, 2019), increasing commitment by local authorities to support eSports events (Murray, 2018) and the establishment of more competitive regional leagues (Ashton, 2019). As eSports expands globally, it allows for the local grassroots level to develop and flourish concurrently, representing an important opportunity to expand our understanding in terms of both local markets and emergent innovation in media management (Cunningham, 2012). Given that eSports research is still in its nascency with fundamental questions about how the field is unfolding (Reitman, Anderson-Coto, Wu, Lee, & Steinkuehler, 2019) there are opportunities to enhance our understanding regarding regional eSport markets.

To develop an understanding of the various factors shaping the eSports market, we need to explore what non-firm actors do and describe how the market is evolving (Scholz, 2019). Specifically, there remains a need to understand the processes that underlie value co-creation from the perspective of eSports communities (Seo, 2013) and how eSports empowers consumers to innovate forms of value for themselves, gaming companies, and society at large (Seo, Buchanan-Oliver & Fam, 2015). To address this issue, we will explore the following research question: What offline actions do actors engage in to facilitate and shape the local eSports market?

We answer this question within the research setting of the Swedish city of Jönköping, which represents one of the few successful examples of a region with a thriving local eSports market, both online and offline. Drawing on qualitative data from 17 depth interviews with players, local eSports actors and local government, we set out to explore how these actors have contributed to the shaping of the local market. Our findings provide insights for those interested in engaging with regional eSports markets from a strategic and media management perspective.

Literature review

The traditional concept of ‘market’ has been grounded in economic theory and biased with a management perspective (Vargo & Lusch, 2017). That is, markets were viewed as entities that firms target, segment, and enter to maximize the profitability of customer relationships. However, recent literature acknowledges the importance of understanding the contexts in which non-firm actors contribute to creating and sustaining new markets (Humphreys, 2010), recognizes actors beyond the firm as influential in this process (Harrison & Kjellberg, 2016), and views markets as socially constructed phenomena (Nenonen, Storbacka &Windahl, 2019). Markets as value-creating systems are governed by various institutions which are shaped by the actors in the market (Vargo & Lusch, 2017). It is achieved through the relevant actors reworking the methods of exchange, networks of stakeholders and institutions in order to create new opportunities to link resources of various stakeholders to improve value creation (Nenonen et al., 2019).

The eSports media market is one of the fastest growing in the world with the global audience increasing from 134 million in 2012 to 644 million by 2022 (NewZoo, 2019). This market is co-created by the collaborative efforts of multiple actors who play important roles in enriching and sustaining the experiential value of eSports consumption (Seo, 2013). In this emerging context, a network of actors from adjacent markets (playing, watching, and governing) are shaping the eSports market system (Scholz, 2019). There is growing academic attention to eSports across disciplines such as marketing (e.g., Seo, 2016), media (e.g. Wulf, Schneider, & Beckert, 2018), finance (e.g., Parshakov & Zavertiaeva, 2018), and sport (e.g., Hallmann & Giel, 2018). Yet to date research within the business context has focused on players and consumers while media research has tended toward questions of the relationships between eSports, sports, and media; definitions and delimitation of the context; the methodologies for study; and the practice of live streaming gameplay (Reitman et al., 2019). While the literature has contributed valuable insights to various aspects of the context it has been difficult to identify previous academic work empirically investigating the agency of a network of actors at a grassroots level in shaping regional eSports markets. As a result, there is a lack of research on how market systems emerge, and the role of network actors in this process (Kjellberg & Olson, 2017). Consequently, media managers lack insight into eSport content creation on the non-professionalized level.

The media management discipline is one where increasingly the line has been blurred between professional (formal) and amateur (informal) media content which has resulted in both challenges and opportunities for traditional media organizations (Cunningham, 2012). It is a result of increased digitization which has left media organizations in flux with rapidly changing conditions and practices that influence markets (Bleyen, Lindmark, Ranaivoson, & Ballon, 2014). Because of these changes, and due to digital multimedia being bidirectional with low barriers to entry, there has been an evolution of media organizations toward acting as platform operators distributing user-generated content (Hess, 2014). Hence media organizations can be defined as “organizers of public, media-based communication which today operate as content providers, as platform operators or in hybrid forms” (Hess, 2014, p. 6). The distribution of both informal and formal media content is disrupting traditional media and creating informal media markets (Cunningham, 2012). While eSport companies as media organizations (Scholz & Stein, 2017) produce formal content, mostly featuring professionals, regional and amateur actors produce informal content. It means there are no barriers as anyone with a computer and internet access can create content on platforms such as Twitch where many create content through streaming due to a love of gaming and eSports (Johnson & Woodcock, 2019).

This approach to media within the context where both formal and informal media is consumed can be attributed to the fact that eSports has traditionally had a focus on grass-roots participation that is deeply embedded in close communities of practice and the valuing of players of all levels (Taylor, 2012). As a result, the market system has developed through the interrelated nexuses of the different consumption practices of those playing, watching, and governing (Seo & Jung, 2016). While many actors want to monetize the audience of eSports, the audience itself is a significant actor in the system, actively participating in shaping the market (Scholz, 2019). It presents a context where value is co-created through networks of actors, rather than firm-managed value propositions (Vargo & Lusch, 2017). Thus, boundaries with proximate markets blur as this network of interdependent actors seek to innovate the eSports market system through their activities and practices (Scholz, 2019). In this case, the value proposition may differ at the individual level, but the ultimate shared goal is raising the value of the eSports market, which is achieved through online and offline activities.

Scholz (2019) breaks down eSports into two larger groups of primary and secondary stakeholders with the audience (and monetary source) as the central primary active actors in the market. Primary stakeholders contribute directly to the value chain and interact directly with the audience, while secondary stakeholders influence the industry through investments or pressure. Those directly involved in the industry as actors can be defined by six characteristics; focus on goal settings, glocality, change orientated, bottom-up resource allocation, digitalization as integral and that participants are over-energetic, over-enthusiastic, and over-dynamic. (Scholz & Stein, 2017). These characteristics are what contribute to the distinctness of the eSports as a context.

As the eSports market continues to innovate, it is necessary for business decision-makers to view it as “a serious, globally spread media sports industry that is supported by millions of economically attractive, socially influential and highly engaged fans” (Ströh, 2017, p. 93). The characteristics of eSports companies represent a completely new understanding of how media organizations work (Scholz & Stein, 2017) while organizations from other industries could learn how eSports manages strategies in digitization and internationalization (Scholz, 2019). The basis of traditional media sports industries are the viewers as media recipients, and this trend has extended to eSports with up to 40% of the audience acting as viewers and not active players (Ströh, 2017). As a result, we can view the eSport media sphere as one that exhibits new characteristics while also retaining aspects of traditional sports media.

Media organizations and eSport actors engage gaming audiences through live-streaming platforms such as Twitch, a social media platform specialized for players to stream their online play (Wulf et al., 2018). Such media center around the creation of online content by active participants of gaming and eSports and tournaments are streamed live for audience consumption. Twitch and various other social media (e.g. YouTube, Facebook) provide a vehicle for local eSports actors to showcase regional events and developments.

The complexity of the media consumption experience extends to the industry itself as eSports continues to struggle with a lack of structures, regulation and governance that leads to issues with legitimacy (Koot, 2019). Currently eSports as a market is evolving and developing rapidly, the nascency of which means for researchers, there are still fundamental questions about how the field is developing (Reitman et al., 2019). The value in studying eSports at a local or regional level can be seen in that we need to understand how networks of multiple social and economic actors increasingly innovate and shape this emerging context (Seo, 2013) while there remain issues that are unique to the grassroots levels with eSports that do not occur on the professional level (Koot, 2019).

Research setting

Sweden has a long tradition in eSports and is ranked among the top five competitive nations in the world (Parshakov & Zavertiaeva, 2018), and the Swedish city of Jönköping provides an optimal platform to investigate these issues for several reasons. DreamHack, a successful international eSports tournament organizer originating in Sweden and the world’s ‘largest digital festival’ has held events in Jönköping since 2001.

“All great festivals have a special relationship with their host city, but I truly believe the DreamHack and Jönköping relationship is extra special. Especially, since DreamHack was not founded in Jönköping, but still most of our DNA strings are connected to the city, the venue Elmia and actual moments that have taken place in Jönköping. Wherever you go in the world, you get the direct reply when bringing up Jönköping, the city where they host DreamHack”. Tomas Lyckedal – Chief Strategy Officer at DreamHack (March 6^th, 2019).

Major tournaments such as DreamHack take place offline in-stadia while also streaming the events to millions worldwide for home consumption of the experience (Scholz & Stein, 2017). These professional tournaments attract thousands who bring their personal computers with them to engage in a Local Area Network (LAN) event. Due to the number of attendees gathering to play, Taylor and Witkowski (2010) defined DreamHack as a Mega LAN, and it holds the record as the world’s largest LAN party. As a result, the event has assumed an important role in the identity of the city to the extent that Jönköping’s tourism branding is as ‘The City of DreamHack’ (Hakeberg, 2018).

The impact of the Jönköping eSports market on the municipality, the business community and the local higher education institutions has been locally recognized since 2007 (Fridh, Jansson, & Melander, 2014). During DreamHack, and for the remainder of the year, eSports in Jönköping consists of a multitude of organizational stakeholders, driven by individual actors, that interact and co-create eSports value within the region. These actors include local government, nonprofit organizations, commercial gaming bodies, educational institutions, student organizations, sports teams, local industry, media organizations and entrepreneurial bodies. These organizations represent elements of the local market that continually interact to shape eSports in the region. These characteristics of the region provide an ideal platform for our research question.

Research method

To explore the offline actions of actors in facilitating and shaping the local eSports market, and with a view to generating grounded theory, we applied a social constructivist framework (Charmaz, 2006). This frame is rooted in the interpretive approach to analysis, which permits the researcher to facilitate deeper exploration of underlying meanings of interviewees’ experiences and actions by adjusting the data-gathering process, such as restructuring existing questions or adding new questions, in response to emergent themes (Charmaz, 2006). Social constructionism places great emphasis on everyday interactions between people and how they use language to construct their reality is fully compatible with classical grounded theory (Andrews, 2012) and effectively supported our focus on the phenomena of the study and our intent to keep an open mind to the themes emerging from the data and to pursue the clues and themes provided (Charmaz, 2006).

Data collection

Our research problem required an investigation of the activities and interactions of multiple actors, calling for a phenomenological approach to our inquiry. In terms of philosophical assumptions, this approach derives from the work of Husserl (1970), particularly with respect to the investigation of the actors’ lived experiences (Creswell, 2007). Thus, we adopted a qualitative approach based on semi-structured depth interviews with 17 locally based eSports actors. All interviews were anonymous, conducted face-to-face in Jönköping and lasted on average 60 minutes. Interviewees included one female and sixteen males between the ages of 21 and 51. This gender imbalance reflects that although the interest of females in eSports is growing, it remains a male-dominated context (Ströh, 2017). All interviewees were involved in playing, organizing, working in or supporting eSports in the Jönköping region. We used a combination of purposeful and snowballing sampling to ensure that interviewees had the experience of the phenomenon under investigation (eSports in the city of Jönköping) and thus had a high level of cultural competence for our domain of enquiry (Creswell, 2007). Table 1 provides a description of each interviewee in terms of their primary relationships to eSports. Purposeful sampling is useful for investigating information-rich cases where social systems and networks are a key feature (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) a characteristic of the examined case of a regional esports market.

Table 1. Interviewees.

Interviewee	Age	Gender	Main Profession	Involvement with eSports
I1	31	M	eSports business owner	Tournament organizer, player
I2	27	M	eSports business owner & manager	eSports Association executive member, LAN organizer, player
I3	29	M	Student	eSports association executive, LAN organizer, player
I4	24	M	eSports entrepreneur	eSports association executive, LAN organizer, player
I5	24	M	Regional LAN developer	eSports association executive, player
I6	22	M	Professional tournament project manager	eSports association executive, eSports coach, LAN organizer, tournament organizer
I7	26	M	Teacher	eSports association executive, eSports educator, coach, player
I8	46	M	Government business development	Local business liaison with eSports organizations
I9	38	M	Government nonprofit coordination	Liaison with nonprofit eSports organizations
I10	22	F	Student	Spectator
I11	39	M	Company executive	eSports team manager, Streamer, player
I12	38	M	Government digital strategist	eSports team manager, eSports Association executive, LAN organizer
I13	51	M	Academic	eSports event attendee as parent (6 events)
I14	26	M	eSports media CEO	eSports consultant, tournament organizer, player
I15	42	M	Media studio owner	Team owner, eSports coach, former competitive player
I16	33	M	Marketing and business consultant	Former professional player and event liaison
I17	28	M	IT consultant	High-school eSports coach, LAN organizer, player

A semi-structured question guide was developed with open questions, organized into themes based around the interviewees’ esports interests, previous experiences and current activities. We tested the questions in mock interviews both thematically to ensure relevance and dynamically to ensure ease of understanding and promotion of an open discussion (Kvale, 1996). Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed and analyzed using NVivo 12 Pro (QSR International, Melbourne).

Data analysis

To answer the research question, our analysis focused on identifying the activities that actors engaged in to facilitate and shape the local eSports markets. The grounded theory approach advocates that interviews and analysis progress in tandem (Corbin & Strauss, 2008), and we began the process on completion of the first interview by reviewing field notes and beginning the coding when the first interview was transcribed. As more than one author coded the data, we used coding guidelines supported by intercoder discussions at the end of each coding cycle. The discussions aimed to support intercoder reliability by revisiting data to reconcile differences in interpretation and refine coding guidelines to support reasoned agreement on the application of codes to statements and phrases in subsequent coding rounds (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2013).

An inductive approach to the data analysis was applied and, following the procedure suitable for generating grounded theory suggested by Gioia et al. (2013), the interview data were analyzed in three distinct steps to build an increasingly detailed understanding of the data and emerging themes to help focus our theoretical rationalizing.

Step one employed initial coding to deconstruct the data into distinct segments that would allow us to identify actions appearing in the data (Saldaña, 2009), using interviewee-centric terms for first-order concepts (Gioia et al., 2013) which yielded 48 separate data incident labels. Step two used focused coding to identify the most frequent and significant incidents that were repeated across the interviews (Saldaña, 2009), aggregated into second-order themes using researcher-centric concepts, rationalized in intercoder discussions (Gioia et al., 2013). By this process, the initial list of codes was reduced to 24 significant categories, aggregated into second-order themes (Gioia et al., 2013). In step three we alternated between the data, incidents, themes, and relevant literature, to identify aggregate dimensions that represent the themes and concepts emerging from the data (Gioia et al., 2013) resulting in four higher-order themes that provided an understanding of how these actors actions facilitated the development of the local market.

Findings

In this section, we present the actions identified in our data that contribute to facilitating and shaping the local eSports market. We identified four higher-order themes namely Building Culture & Values, Advocating & Legitimizing, Institutional Development, and Co-creation of Value through Socializing & Practice, within which the actions were grouped based upon the outcomes to which they contributed. We identified that local actors are firstly concerned with connecting to the local grassroots audience in order to build the culture and values of eSports. As advocates, our actors needed to legitimize eSports while developing many of the institutions comprising the local market. It required actively breaking traditional Swedish conventions, such as ‘gaming is for nerds’, and changing existing attitudes. The resulting institutions and systems allow the actors a platform to continue growing and shaping the market through opportunities to participate. All these activities are supported by accompanying media actions such as sharing and distributing content on Twitch or other social media that have value at both a regional and international level. The following sections discuss these activities, supported with quotations.

Building culture & values from the grassroots up

Our interviewees were continuously focused on providing opportunities for involvement from the local community to develop the local culture and instill the values of the context. We observed a push toward taking younger players away from their private computers at home and enabling them to take their practices offline and into a social sphere that seeks to be inclusive. It can be summarized by one simple quotation by one local activist when asked why they do what they do.

“My goal is always for the good of the grassroots. So, eSports for me, everyone can be in it, regardless of if you are female or male or if you have disabilities, everyone can play” (I#15)

They viewed these offline market-shaping activities as an essential way to broaden their community base while passing on the knowledge and expertise they had gained through hard work in the previous era. Several of the organizations were actively starting to facilitate community building and strengthen eSports culture among youth within the region. This included real world meet ups among the local audience. One interviewee provided us with an insight with why the audience would be motivated to meet up in a physical setting.

“The main driver for them is to meet all the people that you know from home, like playing online to meet each other. I mean, they’re playing basically every day together online, and now they finally have a chance to meet and actually hang out in real life.” (I#6)

This culture is facilitated through both social and economic entities. For example, after school eSports programs allow coaches to embed these values in their students. The motivation for the coaches can be summarized in the following quotation.

“We all have the same goal – we want to make eSports better. That is the bottom line, in the best way we know we want to make eSports better. And a great way is to change the way the kids we can connect with, our students, change the way they act” (I#17)

While another coach identified the resulting benefits inherent for the students themselves which demonstrates the perceived value of the culture beyond the consumption of the games themselves.

“So, you’re looking at giving them experience and education, in eSports to promote communication, teamwork skills, to teach them to be active and self-directed learners to think outside the specific context and take a more pragmatic, strategic approach to things in general. I mean, it is something that you could say, prepares you for what their careers will be.” (I#15)

Supporting these activities, economic actors that provide gaming opportunities also act as community enablers where enthusiasts can socialize.

“It’s like people have it easy to connect to each other. Because everyone has a gaming background. And it’s easy for people to start talking with different groups, because we know we have somehow something in common” (I#1)

Our actors realized that without this building of the culture of eSports within the community and instilling of common values in newcomers, the local scene would remain fragmented and difficult to develop. To support their efforts, they needed to build legitimacy within the region.

Advocating & legitimizing

DreamHack plays a key role in the local eSports scene by providing a legitimizing platform within a context with a history of grassroots play intermingling with larger scale coordinated commercial efforts (Taylor, 2012). It can be seen in the extensive involvement of local stakeholders throughout the DreamHack events. But it is the local actors who advocate for the context to facilitate legitimacy within the region. All our respondents reported acting as advocates for eSports. The university student association, JUSTICE, was established as the first tertiary level student eSport association in Sweden in 2015 but was the result of having to fight for legitimacy.

“I’ve been battling with the university and the student union for the legitimacy of JUSTICE, trying to convince them that what we’re doing is actually not just playing games. We’re actually very good advocates as an association for the university, and we’re probably one of the best marketing tools for the university.” (I#7)

Dispelling assumptions about eSports also allows for more engagement with the community. For example, the staff at a local gaming bar consider it part of their job role to remove stigmas and view part of the success of the establishment as advocating gaming and eSports as an acceptable endeavor.

“We’ve had a lot of guests in here that are not eSports-interested or haven’t played games ever and they come in here with assumptions that are not correct. I’ve had a lot of talks with people who come here, and they realize, oh my thoughts about this have not been correct like my assumptions were wrong.” (I#2)

Through using online media such as Twitch or Facebook to showcase events or tournaments local actors sought to legitimize what was happening at the regional level, something they consider ignored at the professional levels of the context.

“The big games are doing a very poor job because they’re not promoting grassroots level. Which I think is something you need to do. You need to have people arranging small tournaments, LANs so they can stream it” (I#4)

Our actors realized the legitimizing effects of DreamHack yet also were aware that the onus for building on this legacy was their responsibility at the local level. Given the niche status of the context and the younger demographic profile of the audience, they needed to build a deeper profile for the context. DreamHack and local government increasingly support these actors in their legitimization efforts as the scale of the industry develops.

Institutional development

The legitimization effect of DreamHack and the advocacy work of local actors has facilitated institutional development. The local municipality has an awareness of eSports beyond most local authorities and as a result, is more prepared to support local projects as demonstrated by their funding of the three years ‘Spelarena’ (Games Arena), a project designed to enhance the local infrastructure for eSports. This project in tandem with local actors focused on enhancing the infrastructural capabilities of the region for gaming and eSports with the Smeden eSports arena representing the key achievement.

As a further example, a local company’s decision to launch their competitive corporate eSports teams here as opposed to their locations in the larger metropolitan areas of Stockholm or Gothenburg was based on this enculturation of eSports.

“DreamHack has been here for 15 years and for people in Jönköping that has to mean something – so I think Jönköping is a great place to start for our gaming project because gaming has been here for the pioneers in competitive gaming” (I#11)

Again, it is the work of local actors that facilitates a more complete system of interdependent stakeholders that allow the local grassroots scene and the market to be shaped and developed. Their deep level of involvement within the context enables them to identify where institutions are needed resulting, for example, in the development of high school eSports programs.

“Because the kids in school, the biggest dilemma they have is that they cannot go home and practice with a team. I have parents that come to me and say we have a problem. Because where can we find a team?” (I#14)

Various stakeholder institutions actively lobbied the local government to facilitate the rule changes to allow clubs to receive public funding through the State Department of Civil Affairs and Youth. These actors created and developed the after school coaching programs at local high schools and in 2019 eSports will be offered in an official school curriculum subject as Physical Education Specialization within the region. Without the development and reformation of such institutions, the local scene would remain fragmented and potentially plateau as institutions are key to market-shaping (Nenonen et al., 2019). These institutions also allow for a key element of the local market, tournaments, to be held and shared online through media further strengthening the positioning of the city as a key player in global eSports. Stakeholders such as DreamHack and local government continue to support local actors in developing institutions, and several projects are currently planned to further enhance local capabilities in eSports.

Co-creation of value through socializing & practice

The context eSports represents is unique in that the audience itself is also an active participant. Our interviewees collaborated to co-create opportunities for both the active and passive consumption of eSports. It represented shared offline social spaces (supported by online media use) primarily over a passion for eSports, but these connections became fully-fledged friendships encompassing the other aspects of each other’s lives.

“It’s more like a big living room of strangers in it. I met so many friends there that I’m friends with now that I didn’t know before [eSports venue].” (I#10)

This social space allowed for a hybrid community of online and offline play or socializing where key actors take the opportunities to encourage or educate others to push the value proposition further. Online media use and communication is a characteristic of eSports, but our interviewees extend this to the offline environment and actively educate others toward expanding these offline spaces.

“They have an idea as to how it’s supposed to be, and they like the idea of just coming to a place and game-off if you can say that, but they don’t know how to organize it, what it takes to actually make a LAN, how much effort it is. So, what we are trying to do is teach them the steps that need to be taken and why should be done and why they should have helped so it’s a work on both sides.” (I#9)

The examples of these offline spaces encapsulate an experience centered on the culture and practice of eSport but also the strengthening of social ties. Despite competition for resources and success, these social bonds allowed actors to trust and support each other and shape the market through co-creation practices to produce tangible outcomes such as institutions, events or tournaments. While playing together online, social networking and sharing created media played a large role in shaping the market it was in the offline spaces that true planning and collaboration happened.

Discussion

This study identifies four key actions of local actors that enable the development of the eSports market at the regional level. These actions reflect the drive and enthusiasm inherent in most eSport actors, but in the case of Jönköping, it is primarily driven by a select few community leaders who activate and mobilize the less involved through a combination of online media and offline spaces. Despite representing different actor groups, the size of the local market means these actors are all connected. These actors are deeply embedded within the local scene, and for most of them, the consumption and advocacy of eSports are their primary passions in life. While some are in commercially driven eSports organizations with a profit motive, most donate their time and expertise to nonprofit initiatives to better develop the local eSports market. Vargo and Lusch (2017) posit that in its broadest sense, marketing is about co-creating value, through networks of exchange and from this perspective, value co-creation becomes the purpose of society, ergo the market exists to support society. The actions of local actors demonstrate this value co-creation in their efforts to innovate and shape the local eSports market.

The roles and actions of these actors enable them to shape the local market through interdependent relationships that involve traditional institutions such as schools or local government as stakeholders. They actively leverage the cultural legacy of the embeddedness of DreamHack within the region to legitimize an increasingly interwoven and dynamic local scene. Communication, however, is ad-hoc and is usually project or initiative based. Like eSports at the national or international level, regional markets such as Jönköping also lack a key governing body or unifying mission to co-ordinate and develop the market to its full potential.

At a regional level, many different stakeholders, actors and networks of actors take on a broad range of roles within a local market (Appendix 1). Stakeholders at the local level such as educational institutions, knowledge centers acting as community enablers, local government, local teams and national youth or nonprofit organizations, become embedded through the interdependent exchanges of relevant actors and act as the primary stakeholders at a regional level (Figure 1). These roles are fluid and interrelated through the associations and actions of different actors depending on situational influences. Jönköping has an advantage in that twice a year, DreamHack acts as the central primary stakeholder within the local market, providing a focal point for the previous fifteen years. Players and the audience remain as the core stakeholder while other actors and stakeholders continue to change, evolve and grow in line with the development of the context.

Figure 1. Regional eSports stakeholders (adapted from Scholz, 2019).

Implications for practice

Contexts such as eSports can create a platform for regional media creation that can potentially act as a catalyst for a local culture receptive to engaging in media. Those interested in enhancing or engaging with a regional eSports market through developing offline capabilities to activate media content production should consider the following;

• As eSports continues to grow, more competitive events hosted offline are inevitable and attracting these events will require regions to provide a focalized value proposition for future market development. Optimally events such as DreamHack that work with the local grassroots are optimal to maximize engagement.

• The support of the local government or eSport governing bodies can enable development and actors should actively explore potential options for funding or support.

• Developing or enabling infrastructure to allow eSports enthusiasts to play and socialize in an offline environment can foster organic grassroots growth.

• As eSports continues to grow in popularity among younger generations, leveraging and facilitating this passion through active clubs and educational programs can activate a future generation of eSport leaders.

• Formalizing a local governing body or establishing a role of development coordinator will be required to enable regions to develop market-shaping strategies.

• Identifying and enabling local key actors and opinion leaders can provide tangible results in institutional development that develop the market given the drive and initiative inherent in these actors.

Implications for research

While this study makes a number of valuable contributions, it does have some limitations, and future research is needed to explore further and extend these findings. The first limitation is the single regional market setting. Whilst this was a rich context for this study, future research could investigate other regional eSports market settings and determine whether the activities of offline actors identified here are prevalent in other regional settings and how these may differ. It could help develop a broader understanding of how offline actors influence and facilitate eSports market development, and so broaden the contributions to strategic media management. Second, although we have identified four higher-order groupings of offline actor actions that shape a market, more may be identified in alternative empirical settings.

Our findings provide opportunities for future research on regional eSports to be investigated in more detail. Further studies should focus on theory development within the context such as market-shaping, ecosystem structure, legitimization, institutional development, stakeholder analyses, forms of emergent business models, media use or events such as streaming or LAN parties when investigating eSports at the local level. One concern in conducting this study was the lack of female involvement in shaping the local market, and we recommend studies that could help understand and potentially address this imbalance. These further studies could further advance understanding of the impact of the market-shaping activities of non-firm actors, how this may influence media management strategies and the shaping of the broader local economy. While many studies focus on the professional settings within the context, the majority of eSports and associated media happens in the amateur and grassroots level and as such, is deserving of academic attention.

Conclusion

This article presents the first study of an offline regional market in eSports. It provides key insights that practitioners can leverage to replicate the actions that have enabled Jönköping to grow as a long-term market in eSports and demonstrates for researchers the value inherent in localized studies within the context. The long history of DreamHack in Jönköping reflects a unique case in eSports as similar cities with a reputation in eSports such as Katowice or Cologne can be seen as focusing on the professional level events, while here the professional and grassroots are intertwined through the combination of LAN and competition. An ecosystem has emerged here as a result of this relationship with DreamHack acting as an incubator and throughout this research and post interviews, the actions of local actors have continuously increased the value and extent of the local market with a host of local organizations have increased their collaborations with DreamHack.

These continued advancements provide further platforms that allow for media content to be created and distributed, facilitating engagement at a growing level within the local community, at the national level and globally. It is one of the first cases of transforming a digital medium into an analog medium and a global phenomenon evolving into a local market. It demonstrates that in terms of media management, media can be a factor in developing an offline context and contribute to regional society. As companies such as DreamHack continue to evolve their strategies and increase their involvement within the local and grassroots level of eSports, we will continue to see an evolution of media patterns within the context. The work presented here provides media management practitioners and scholars with an indicator of the value of understanding local practices in an era where media continues to evolve rapidly. While the phenomenon of eSports is a key driver of these changes, it has broader implications in terms of understanding other forms of new or traditional media. Increasingly regional networks such as ‘The City of DreamHack’ have relevance as a concept within what we understand as the media sphere.

Appendix 1.

Current eSport Stakeholder Roles in Jönköping

Table

Stakeholder	Description	Stakeholder Roles Occupied Locally
DreamHack	International eSports Tournament Organizer that hosts DreamHack Winter and Summer in Jönköping	Tournament Organizers Community Enablers Media
Kappa Bar	eSports and Gaming bar/restaurant with competition hosting facilities and eSports events streamed live	Amateur or Semi Professional Teams
		Tournament Organizers
		Hardware Providers
		Infrastructure Providers
		Sponsors
		Community Enablers
		Knowledge Center
Druidz	Originally a competitive eSports association founded in 1994 until 2016. Relaunching in 2019 as a local hub for competitive gaming and advocate for eSports	Amateur or Semi Professional Teams
		Tournament Organizers
		Community Enablers
		Media
BiteMind Studios	Bitemind Studios is a local media company who is works with events, livestreams, tv productions and more but retains a focus on eSports.with the eSports focused podcast ‘Momentum’	Entreupreneurs
		Media
		Community Enablers
Phoenix Blue	Nonprofit organization developing eSports in the region through coaching, facilitation and competitive play. First eSports organization to operate under the culture aspect of local government support	Amateur or Semi Professional Teams
		Tournament Organizers
		Service Providers
		Community Enablers
Full Stack Media	New media company specializing in eSports media production	Entreupreneurs
		Media
Football Teams Jönköpings Södra IF Husqvarna FF	Professional and semiprofessional teams in the Swedish football league with professional teams in Fifa	Sports Organizations
		Professional Teams
		Amateur or Semi Professional Teams
Local Schools	Local high schools who have developed and integrated eSports into their educational offerings either through after school coaching programs or as official education products delivered by professional teachers.	Amateur or Semi Professional Teams
		Knowledge Centers
		Community Enablers
Aditro Logistics	Logisitics company that has developed eSports facilities on site with a view to fielding competitive corporate teams	Amateur or Semi Professional Teams
		Investors
Gameffect	Local LAN/gaming-center providing accessible and tangible offline space for younger eSport enthusiasts to play and practice together.	Community Enablers
		Hardware Providers
		Amateur or Semi Professional Teams
		Tournament Organizers
JUSTICE	First Swedish University eSports Association	Amateur or Semi Professional Teams
		Tournament Organizers
		Community Enablers
Local Government	Local municipality that works directly with DreamHack while facilitating eSports through the cultural branch. Funded ‘Spelarena’ a three year initiative to enhance the local capabilities for eSports.	Community Enablers
		Infrastructure Providers
		Investors
Smeden eSports Arena	Government funded initiative that provides physical facilities for esports training competition and LAN events. Run by ESU and Husqvarna FF.	Tournament Organizers
		Service Providers
		Community Enablers
		Hardware Providers
		Infrastructure Providers
Esport United	Government funded national nonprofit organization. Organizes eSports organizations and teams on a national level. Houses one of Swedens largest CS:GO org. Publiclir. With near 50 000 members.	Tournament Organizers
		Service Providers
		Community Enablers
		Hardware Providers
		Infrastructure Providers
		Amateur or Semi Professional Teams
Swedish LAN association (SLF)	Emerging nonprofit organization based in Jönköping. Its purpose is to organize all LAN organizations in Sweden.	Service Providers
		Community Enablers
		Media
		Governing Bodies
		Hardware Providers
		Infrastructure Providers
		Knowledge center
ABF	Government funded national nonprofit organization offering education and enabling cultural events.	Community Enablers
		Infrastructure Providers
		Knowledge center
		Service Providers

This stakeholder profile is based on Scholz’ (2019) identified eSport stakeholder roles. We have added knowledge centers and amateur or semiprofessional teams as roles relevant to regional and local eSport markets.