Toward cultural and creative industry: Chinese eSports through a business ecosystem lens

ABSTRACT

The field of electronic sports (eSports) is thriving worldwide but has received limited attention as a cultural and creative industry (CCI). This study is the first to employ three layers (productivity, robustness, and niche creation) of the business ecosystem (BE) to systematically examine the flourishing eSports sector and its development as a CCI-BE. It also maps out the dynamic and emerging stakeholders that have contributed to the eSports ecosystem. We conducted content analysis combined with observations, fifty interviews with elite stakeholders, and analysis of financial and investment data. We found that the development of eSports as a CCI-BE reflects great potential and precarity. First, the business agenda of the media conglomerate Tencent aligns with the ‘cultural confidence’ slogan proposed by the government, thus ensuring the robustness and stability of the eSports ecosystem. Second, municipal governments, local real estate developers, and eSports tournaments are increasingly interconnected and their contemporary business models and innovation activities in the eSports industry have co-evolved. Third, the role of real estate developers remains nascent without the ability to coordinate and co-evolve with the eSports value chain. eSports may provide a novel converging territory for contemporary cultural and creative industries/traits in the Chinese digital society.

KEYWORDS:

• ESports
• cultural and creative industry
• policy
• digital culture and management
• business ecosystem
• China

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The definition of physical dominators resembles other accepted metaphors such as focal firm (Hou and Shi 2021) and ecosystem captain (Teece 2012). This role aims to integrate vertically or horizontally to directly control and benefit from the ecosystem. By contrast, value dominators have limited control over their ecosystem and extract as much as value as they can from the markets they enter (Iansiti and Levien 2004). This role produces tremendous returns in the short and medium term but is unable to sustain these returns in the ecosystem or to achieve an unreplaceable position (Iansiti and Levien 2004). Additionally, value dominators control both value capture and value creation in the BE.

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by The National Social Sciences Fund of China (NSSFC), Project No. 20BXW103 (Research on communication ethics and governance framework in the age of Artificial Intelligence).

Notes on contributors

Yupei Zhao

Yupei Zhao (PhD University of Leicester) is an ‘Hundred Talent Program Young Professor’ and doctorial tutor in college of Media and International Culture in Zhejiang University (PRC). She is currently chair-elected of International Communication Association (ICA) Popular Media and Culture Division, director of Cultural creativity in metaverse industry Research Center. Her research interests widely include digital culture and global communication. [email protected].

Qiuxian Li

Qiuxian Li is a master student in college of Media and International Culture in Zhejiang University.

Zhongxuan Lin

Zhongxuan LIN (Ph.D.) is a Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. His research interests include game studies, cultural studies and communication studies. Email: [email protected].