From the Asia-Pacific to Africa: the involvement of stakeholders in the novel esports societies in the digital sport era

Abstract

Esport is steadily evolving yet gaining recognition and critical mass although still in its infancy. Since it is a relatively new phenomenon, new potential stakeholders emerge. However, esports stakeholder panoramas in many Asia-Pacific and African societies have remained obscure. By incorporating the stakeholder theory, integrative literature review, focus group research design, this paper offers fruitful insights about the esport ecosystem in the digital sport era. The findings underpin that anchoring stakeholder relationships on technology adoption, hands-on stakeholder engagements and collaborations, institutionalization of gaming and esports tourism, entities can boost their competitiveness and momentum to flourish in the midst of legitimacy challenges and the growing antagonism with traditional sports. The result indicates that stakeholders occupy valuable space in the value chain. This paper’s key contribution is the proposing of a conceptual framework for augmenting growth, co-creation, governance, and future ecosystem mapping in the increasingly dynamic esport space.

Keywords:

• Esports
• digital sport era
• stakeholder involvement
• Africa
• Asia-Pacific

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Although our study uses ‘esports’ and ‘esport’ as the spelling, we noted that several authors have used other different spelling such as ‘e-sports’ and ‘electronic sports’ to mean the same.

2 The status of esports as a sport is still debatable, there is an ongoing discussion.

3 So many nations, from Africa to the Asia-Pacific region, have embraced esports as a pastime, a professional sport, or both. But who exactly are the main players here? Therefore, the purpose of our study was to provide some context, and the study’s findings are merely the tip of the iceberg.

4 Despite the fact that the majority of our study discusses esport as a worthwhile effort, there is a wealth of scholarly evidence that shows how detrimental esports can be.