Running Head: E-SPORTS AND E-SPORT TOURISM DEVELOPMENT
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E-sports And E-sport Tourism Development
Ping-Han Liu
Doctor. Aixa A. Ritz
Special Project
25 Mar 2016
E-sports and E-sport Tourism Development
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Abstract
The success of the internet and the accelerated growth of the virtual world have led to the
high rate of developed experienced in the world of computer and video games. Gaming has
become a right of passage for the younger generation. As a result, a new kind of competition
event has been created— E-sports. Similar to a sports league, E-sports competitions are held
weekly to attract audiences that come to watch the games. As a result; E-sports has become so
popular in many countries. This situation seems to show a new type of tourism because these
fans come from different cities, states, or even countries to attend the E-sport competitions,
especially in big E-sport games. The tourists’ desire for new experiences has led to the creation
of new games and the development of destinations to satisfy their demand. This paper would be
helpful to analyze the world of E-sports, the development of E-sport tourism, and its impact on
our community.
E-sports and E-sport Tourism Development
I.
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Introduction
Nowadays, the success of Internet and rapid development in the virtual world is accountable
for the development of computer and video games worldwide. These computer and video games
have become an essential part of young adults’ lives. As a result, a new kind of competition event
has been created— E-sports. The term “E-sports” was proposed by Mat Bettinson at the launch
of the Online Gamers Association that is used to describe Competitive video and computer game
plays (Gestalt, 1999). Also, Michael Wagner (2006, pp.3) states that "E-sports" is an area of
sports activities in which people develop and train mental or physical abilities by the use of
information and communication technologies." Till now, the term “E-sports” is known as
competitive gaming or electronic sports for organized multiplayer video game competitions,
particularly among professional players.
Similar to a sports league, E-sports competitions are held weekly and attract audiences that
come to watch the games that make E-sports increasingly become popular in many countries.
This situation seems to show a new type of tourism because these fans come from different
cities, states, or even countries to attend the E-sports competitions, especially in big E-sports
competitions. The tourists’ desire for new experiences has led to the creation of new games and
the development of destinations to satisfy their demand (Ramírez-Hurtado & Paralera-Morales,
2014). As a result, the growing popularity of E-sports and its ability to attract tourists to attend Esports competitions, a new pattern of tourism was created– E-sport tourism. Sports tourism can
be defined as individuals traveling to see or participate in sports events or visit the sites which
are connected with sports (Waller, Trendafilova, & Daniell, 2014). Sports tourism has been
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around for a while now. People have been known to travel from different parts of the world to
attend world championships such as the world cup and the Olympics. E-sport tourists are just
like sports tourists. E-sport tourists are willing to travel thousands of miles to attend major events
and share their passion with hundreds of other avid fans just like themselves.
Rai and Yan (2009) noted down that the increasing availability of broadband Internet
connections has led to a rise in popularity of networked games. This range from large, complex,
persistent online environments is supporting a large number of simultaneous participants. For
instance, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games attract numerous players. MOBA is a
gaming style that each game has ten players, five players playing against five players.
In figure 1, there are two bases which are called “Nexus” on the right-top sight and leftbottom sight. The way to win the game is one of the teams destroy other teams’ nexus.
(Figure 1: The map of league of legend)
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This gaming style not only develop communication and teamwork between teams to win the
games, but also make surprised people in computer games world — it is hard to image that
computer games can be like two NBA teams compete for the winner of that night. As a result,
MOBA game style has become the one of the main gaming events in E-sports competition. There
are two main Multiplayer Online Battle Arena style games in E-sports events—– League of
Legends and Dota 2.
In the League of Legends, the players have to assume the role of the unseen “summoner”
who controls a champion with unique abilities against a team of other computer-controlled
champions or another player. The goal of the game is to destroy the opponent team’s nexus,
which is a structure that lies at the heart of a base protected by defensive structures. Each League
of Legends match is discrete, with all champions starting off relatively weak but increasing in
strength by accumulating items and experience over the course of the game. League of Legends
(LoL) is a popular E-sport event which has been organized by coliseums Games Company since
2011. Because of the competitive gaming style, League of Legends continues to attract players,
which now exceed 67 million people online (RIOT Games).
On the other hand, League of Legends competitions is very attractive to E-sport tourists, for
instance, the tickets to attend the League of Legends world championship competition in 2012
were sold out in four days; the tickets to visit the League of Legends world championship game
in 2013 were sold out in an hour (RIOT Games). Hinnant (2013) stated that, “The 2012 League
of Legends World Championships represents another step in the gradual legitimation and
professionalization of organized game competitions, now commonly referred to as “E-sports.” In
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2013, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recognized League of
Legends’ pro players as professional athletes. Also, in Jan 27th, 2015, some E-sports events were
known as second level Olympic sporting events by the Korean Olympic Committee (Christopher,
2015).
Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a popular multiplayer online battle arena mod for the
popular video game Warcraft 3, Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen
Throne. The game is based on the "Aeon of Strife" map for StarCraft. The major objectives of
the game are for each competing team to destroy the Ancient, which is a heavily guarded
structure found at the opposing corners of the map. The players use heroes, very powerful units
assisted by allied and Al-controlled fighters. Players level up their heroes and use virtual gold to
buy gaming equipment as strive to complete their mission. Valve Software operates Dota2
(Defense of the Ancients). Like League of Legends, Dota2 has a large number of fans and the
competitions also attract numerous of tourists.
For example, The first group of tickets of Dota2 2015 world championship game for The
International were sold out in a matter of minutes, this kind of popular demand caused Valve
Software ask fans do not purchase more than five tickets per person for the second batch of the
cards of Dota2 2015 world championship competition (Craft, 2015).
Hinnant (2013) noted down, “The 2012 League of Legends World Championships represent
another step in the gradual legitimation and professionalization of organized game competitions,
now commonly referred to as “E-sports.” These new game events create a broad range of new
concepts and institutions, which not only include individual sports, sponsorship deals, world
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ranking, but also represent a new culture of both players and spectators in E-sports industry.
Recently, the number of E-sports players is growing fast, and the number of spectators of
electronic sports becomes even more quickly, resulting in E-sports becoming a new spectator
sport that causes E-sports have already become an increasingly popular part of the digital game
culture.
Gratton, Shilbi, and Coleman (2005) stated that sports tourism affects many cities
aggressively in order to compete to host sports events for the anticipated economic benefits from
sports tourists, infrastructure development, foreign investment, and international prestige. With
the development of E-sports, E-sport tourism may become a new strategy for government to
attract gamers and spectators as tourists to enhance the economy. Moreover, in the event of
professional E-sports teams advancing into the international developments, the opportunity for
fan attendance and media attention increases, which in turn has the potential to provide positive
economic benefits to the hospitality and tourism industry.
The purpose of this study is to examine the attendance of League of Legends competitions
and to investigate its impacts on E-sport tourism. League of Legends data will be the primary
resources to explore E-sport tourism in this paper.
II. Literature Review
Sports to E-sports
The term "Sport" means all kinds of physical activities that involve organized and planned
participation with an aim of increasing the physical fitness levels and mental ability as well as
forming relationships or obtaining results in competitions at all levels. This is a comprehensive
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definition as it incorporates all forms of sport, physical activity and exercise. Sport is a cultural
phenomenon and an integral part of society. It is highly visible and touches almost everyone as
participants, spectators and consumers (DePauw & Gavron, 2005).
Tiedemann (2004) also defined “Sport” as a “cultural field of activity in which human
beings voluntarily go into a relation to other people with the conscious intention to develop their
abilities and accomplishments – particularly in the area of skilled motion – and to compare
themselves with these other people according to rules put self or adopted without damaging them
or themselves deliberately.” Based on this definition, Wanger (2006) gave E-sports a definition
—“E-sports” is an area of sports activities in which people develop and train mental or physical
abilities in the use of information and communication technologies trough competitive computer
games or Video Games.
Even though E-sports can be recognized as a form of sports, there certainly are unique
aspects to E-sports. Hutchins, a scholar who used the sociological perspective to compare
traditional sports and E-sports, elaborated a different view about E-sports. Hutchins (2008) stated
that Cyber-athletic competition could not be thought of regarding media or entertainment or
computer gaming because there were no institutional and material boundaries can separate them;
this situation leads to the creation of a new social form, E-sports. Ditmarsch (2013) also argued
that E-sports have become an increasingly popular part of the digital game culture, and
additional research of the phenomena of E-sports. Also, E-sports have no longer remained as
standard games played on computer rooms or considered “virtual competitions.” E-sports had
been developed as a new industry which had real-live, pulse-pounding affairs held before wildly
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enthusiastic audiences, with a glorious victory or humiliating defeat hanging in the balance on
each player’s every move (Ray & Yan, 2009).
More specifically, E-sports has been used as a practical tool to attract young people to
volunteering, engaging them at the community level. Eley and Kirk (2002) found that such
programs resulted in increased measures of selflessness, community coordination, leadership and
sense of identity among young people. These findings concur with a recent analysis of the social
and cultural benefit. Moreover, the effectiveness of sport for building social inclusion is a result
of its usefulness in reducing social exclusion (Bailey, 2005). The importance of sport worldwide
in that it’s one of the biggest contributors to the economy not just by skill development and
health improvement, but also through income generation, social cohesion, and capital building.
This concurs with the sentiment held by individuals that sport unites people especially families
and thus encourages family interaction (Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, 2002; Conference
Board of Canada, 2005).
Coalters (2005) review essay details relevant evidence concerning the role of sport in
building and facilitating social and community inclusion and active citizenship. This piece of
literature, as brought out by Coalter (2005), links game to Putnam’s (2000) concept of social
capital. Good social capital translates to strengthened community networks, better local identity
and solidarity, and high levels of trust and support among members. As such, there is evidence to
show that development of sport in the community contributes to the betterment of communities
(Coalter, 2005, p.19). The difference in communities between traditional sports and E-sports, the
geography, could not entirely remain as an influential factor because the Internet brought E-
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sports spectators all over the world together. Strangers could discuss the E-sports competition
and share their experiences or ideas via an online spectating channel such as Twitch TV. This
situation caused E-sports communities not only exists in the real world but also in the virtual
world (Taylor, 2012; Ditmarsh, 2013).
Tourism and Sport Tourism
The concept of tourism and sports tourism has considerably become very prominent in the
last few years either in study academic fields or in the rising popularity of travel products both in
the social life and economically having impacts on the current world economy (Gibson, 1998).
Many scholars tried day by day to define precisely possible reasons as to why sports tourism is
growing deeper roots into the currents world but end up with disparities. Quite a numbers of
questions that researchers tended to try to find out are “what do we call this kind of tourism and
is it sports tourism” as stated by De Knop and Delpy (De Knop, 1995; Delpy, 1998). Redmond,
the world know researcher claimed in his work paper on whether sport-related tourists referred to
spectators attending events in a Hallmark or rather fans attending sports events like the Olympic
Games (Redmond, 1990,1991). Also, this idea of sports tourism regarded as spectators making
decisions to attend Olympic Games (Chalip, Green & Velden, 1998).
Delpy (1998) also tried to give precisely a precise description of what sports tourism and
linked it to participation rather than just becoming a game spectator. Sports tourism had
significantly transformed to taking direction more than just being a spectator to an extent of
active participation in sporting events and any related sports activities (Ramírez-Hurtado &
Paralera-Morales, 2014). De Knop (1995) claimed sports tourism is come up with some accurate
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observations that active sports tourism did take part in four forms or vacations—i) real or good
sports holiday, a case in which an individual could make up to take a trip to go skiing rather than
idly spending holiday periods doing non-constructive duties when free from routine chores; ii) a
participant taking advantage of any significant sports facilities that he/she came across at a
particular sports destination center, though in reality, the sport may not be the primary purpose of
the trip; iii) and is the private sporting holiday, a case where the tourists decide to a take active
part in non-organized sports activities like volleyball on beach sand or participating in beach
cricket.
The active participation in sports tourism was again emphasized by Glyptis and Jackson
(1993) who gave emphasis on the active involvement on in sports by tourists rather than just
taking substantial participation as spectators and would help them to conceptualize what sports
tourism meant. The central area of scholars concerned in the world of today gives out precise
reasons that individuals could attribute to the relative passive sports tourism participation.
Government impacted indeed on sport-for-all policies also acted as a major driving factor
towards human involvement in sports tourism even if one did not intend or plan for it. A
commonly and also fast trending in the sports world today is the real sports amateurs and
frequent tournaments that get staged all over in each and every city.
The idea by De Knop (1987) and also backed up by Kurtzman and Zauhar (1995), and
proposals claim that currently, some groups of people have gone further as far as creating their
events like “ road-runs” as a means to attract or entice a larger number of tourists in their cities
and towns. The most shared and popular physical activity games in currently called Europe are
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walking, bicycling, and skiing in the mountain landscape of countries like the Scandinavian with
terrain and climatic conditions that provide better sporting conditions for active tourism sports
for instance. Nevertheless, research on active sports tourist is enough very scarce that average
sports group of participants are mainly college-educated or with a higher education above that of
college level (Delpy, 1998).
Also, sport tourism providers can well be advised to have a full understanding of
expectations and experiences of the target market or clients who will be using the resources to set
in place (Green & Chalip, 1998). Furthermore, the structuring of a particular competition
sometimes interfered with by the informal gatherings which would make a good portion of the
tourism sports participants. These ideas and findings were what can drive someone wisely on the
planning strategies for a particular sporting activity (Green & Chalip, 1998). Moreover, using the
Tourist Role Preference Scale of Gibson (1998), one is subject to finding one best and attractive
sports tourism center and a possible best sporting activity to undertake in these respective sports
centers. An important factor treated as constraints are three; lack of social network; gender of the
tourists and age factor.
Based on customer evaluation, two modern scientists Bojanic and Warnick (1995) published
out a paper in which full a study of complete segmentation and effects of the modernized family
like cycle also had impacts on the ski resort. It is very clear in their paper findings that majority
of ski market comprises mainly of the married skies and children of a healthy population
consisting of the age below 45 years. Unlike the sports tourism domain discussed before, a sports
tourism sector or industry was studied to have quite a good population of the spa. Tourists who
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had got medical advice from professional therapists on the importance of sports tourism
participation and the impact it would bring to their health improved as discussed on persona;
rejuvenation (Waterberg et al.1978; Williams and Doss 1996). Another possible impact of sports
tourism is on community picture (Garnham, 1996).
Garnham in his research findings made an observation that in a case study undertaken in
New Zealand (1996) comes up with a conclusion that hosting national football events were on of
the games that owed a lot of pride to the hosting community. This, therefore, could influence
most of the New Zealand communities to target and try host such kind of national football games
until when it come to pass as one of the influential international games in the current word
history. Therefore, once psycho income on hosting pride was earning sports like football would
inspire a group of people to admire and aim for having hosted such kind international football
games. By so doing, there would be growing tourism sports within such sport or rather the
centers.
Although it is becoming a world game of generally younger population, the active tourism
sports participation has considerably been under prominent and quick evolution for people who
admire to be popular in their lifespan. Gyplis and Hall (1992) found out that sports tourism is not
regarded as a unitary phenomenon, but there exists big a distinction between sports attendance
and active sports participation. A psychological reward of the two events of action would
possibly be either social or of a mental level of understanding of rewards for a particular stand of
action.
In an article on leisure study, also offered substantial proofs that various recreational
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activities usually associated with different clusters of attribution (Shamir 1992; Schenker 1994;
Haggard & Williams in 1992). Example, in volley playing ground, the volley player are
considered as players as well as the backpackers regarded as free, adventurous and fun loving
people but do take part in the activity within the volley pitch.
Nevertheless, the inclusion of most social events in formal structures of tournaments and
competitions had got appreciation from both, players and non-player, or rather just game
supporters. The very quick spread of sports tourism can be linked to three main factors;
(1) The economic forces. The belief was that one of the primary causes of widespread of
sports tourism in the current word picture is the economic power. Hautbois, Ravenel, and Durand
(2003) stated that affluence of today had significantly risen to greater heights and that many
families face now employed or at least with one or more employees than it was in the past.
Similarly, these employees had recently been experiencing increment in their leisure time. It is a
factor which had improved the leisure hours which could then be a possible driving force for
such people to seek and participate in sports tourism.
(2) The technological innovation had also widely contributed towards increased sports
tourism. With the current world improvement on the technical structure, it was becoming simpler
and easier for populations to make short and long distances are only aiming to take part in sport
tourism activities. ( Hunter, 1965; Wilson, 1966) Moreover, the creation and improvement of
new transportation facilities, accommodations among many others had so far offered real home
shelters for travelers in the pretext of attending sports. Innovations in sports types of equipment
and revised rules had also contributed towards popularity and development of sporting and more
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specifically, on tourism sports. ( Musa & Ndawayo, 2011; Su, Sun & Zhao, 2012 ) As a result of
the wide range of technological innovation, travels and appeal of the sports had rapidly led to the
expansion of sports tourism in the current world.
(3) The final factor attributed to the fast spread of sports tourism is termed to be attitudinal,
and value changes. The attitudinal changes were more pronounces in Western societies where
there had been a shift from work ethic values to leisure emphasis, self-realization together with
hedonism. Sports and sports tourism changed stemmed to these attitudinal changes and the
rapidly growing societal influence on games (Lee et al… ,2011). This tendency had principally
lowered the barrier to sports and possible increased participation as people who would have
considered sporting activities not for them could now start seeking independent participation at
their level of a wish.
Sports Tourism impacts, importance and relationships between tourism and sports tourism
are clearly outlined. Impacts of the sports tourism have primarily penetrated into the economic,
environmental and cultural implications (Rose, 2001). Some researchers suggestions are that
sports event planner tends to adopt conservative estimation of the potential profits that hosting a
particular tourism event shall bring into the country’s economic sector (Turco, 2012).
The impacts on environment, socio-cultural and economic sectors can be either positive of
negative. This, therefore, is a downfall or rather a limitation of the research already done by like
of De Knop, Williams, Gibson among many other prominent researchers. A general viewpoint
priority in studying sports tourism mainly overlooked and, therefore, one need to find out some
of the possible solutions to handling such additional errors. It is also very costly to carry out an
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assessment of sport tourism participants, needs and some other characteristics in planning for
sport tourism events….
