Esports Governance: Exploring Stakeholder Dynamics

Peng, Qi ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8730-4458, Dickson, Geoff, Scelles, Nicolas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6177-5307, Grix, Jonathan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7315-1641 and Brannagan, Paul Michael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4003-8420 (2020) Esports Governance: Exploring Stakeholder Dynamics. Sustainability, 12 (19). 8270. ISSN 2071-1050

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Abstract

Esports is a rapidly growing industry. However, the unidentifiable governance structure of the industry has contributed to a number of integrity-eroding activities. By exploring esports stakeholder dynamics, this paper answers the question, “Is the esports governance model sustainable?” Data were sourced from documentation, focus groups (N = 3) and semi-structured interviews (N = 6). Thematic analysis was conducted using Nvivo. The findings suggest that (1) the current esports governance framework features some attributes of the “lead organisation-governed network”, with the power residing mainly in game publishers; (2) the rising power of other stakeholders in the network seeking to address integrity issues has caused fragmentation of the esports governance framework; (3) esports governance is evolving towards a network administration organisation (NAO) model. Such evolution has a few challenges—most notably, the compliance of game publishers. Given the social impact of the integrity issues, governments should play a main role in facilitating a NAO model.