TY - JOUR
T1 - Gaming Gone Viral
T2 - An Analysis of the Emerging Esports Narrative Economy
AU - Newman, Joshua I.
AU - Xue, Hanhan
AU - Watanabe, Nicholas M.
AU - Yan, Grace
AU - McLeod, Christopher M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - In this article, we use narrative economics to analyze the social conditions promoting the growth in private investment in esports—specifically in North American esports teams and franchises. Investment in the esport industry has outpaced revenue growth and esport teams do not have a proven cash flow model. To understand this disjuncture, we draw upon the narrative economic approaches developed by Robert Shiller and colleagues who have demonstrated how the public narrative holds the potential to influence economic behavior—and whereby following a popular story might lead to irrational investment, labor, or consumption practices. We provide a quantitative analysis of published stories that shows the virality of esport narratives is consistent with epidemic models and that business investment narratives are spreading faster than general esport narratives. We then provide a mixed method analysis that demonstrates the central narrative of esport stories is one of growth, opportunity, and sport-esport synergies. We conclude with a discussion about the industrial and theoretical implications of studying viral stories as they relate to preconditioning economic behavior in the sports industry.
AB - In this article, we use narrative economics to analyze the social conditions promoting the growth in private investment in esports—specifically in North American esports teams and franchises. Investment in the esport industry has outpaced revenue growth and esport teams do not have a proven cash flow model. To understand this disjuncture, we draw upon the narrative economic approaches developed by Robert Shiller and colleagues who have demonstrated how the public narrative holds the potential to influence economic behavior—and whereby following a popular story might lead to irrational investment, labor, or consumption practices. We provide a quantitative analysis of published stories that shows the virality of esport narratives is consistent with epidemic models and that business investment narratives are spreading faster than general esport narratives. We then provide a mixed method analysis that demonstrates the central narrative of esport stories is one of growth, opportunity, and sport-esport synergies. We conclude with a discussion about the industrial and theoretical implications of studying viral stories as they relate to preconditioning economic behavior in the sports industry.
KW - esports
KW - investment behavior
KW - narrative economics
KW - narratological analysis
KW - viral stories
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85091464121&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/2167479520961036
DO - 10.1177/2167479520961036
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85091464121
JO - Communication and Sport
JF - Communication and Sport
SN - 2167-4795
ER -