The article discusses the growing popularity of eSports events and aims to understand the parents’ perspective towards eSports and eSports events. As the growth of eSport events presents an opportunity of the tourism industry. The study used a qualitative approach utilising a semi-structured interview. The discussion of this semi-structured interviews forms part of a greater research study on eSports in South Africa, and these results are just preliminary results from an eSport event held high school in May 2023. The study found that parents have a positive perspective towards eSports events and are supportive of their children participating in them. The study also found that eSports events are relatively new and that there is a lack of research on parents’ perspective of eSports tournaments. The study recommends further research to understand the motivations of participants and spectators to attend on-site eSports events, the expenses of children participating in eSports, and the benefits of eSports as an event. The article also defines eSports and the different types of eSports games, and discusses the adoption of eSports as a sport. The study provides valuable insights into the growing popularity of eSports events and the need for further research in this area.
1 Introduction and Background
eSports also known as competitive gaming is a rapidly growing industry which has gained immense popularity in recent years, with the global eSports market being valued at over $ 1.38 billion dollars and estimated to be valued at $ 1.87 billion in 2025 [24]. The growth of eSport is a global phenomenon with the largest markets being in Asia and North America [24]. The growth in the eSports industry has presented an opportunity for eSports tourism and eSports events [11]. eSports events are being hosted all over the world although these events are particularly hosted in Europe, Asia, and the United States [12]. However, the expansion of eSports is not restricted to the northern hemisphere, with Games Industry Africa (GIA) predicting that Sub-Saharan Africa will experience the world's fastest gaming growth [17]. eSports event which fall under the category of eSports tourism, according to Ioannis & Ioulia [11], shares multiple similarities with conventional sports tourism, with the key difference being that fans watch video game players rather than athletes competing in “traditional” team or individual sports.
A study conducted by Hamari and Sjöblom [10], stated that most participants are males below the age of 25. This is evident with Anderson et al.[3] stating that eSports has been growing in high schools around the world as eSports provides opportunities for students to develop skills as well as offer a platform for competition and personal development. Evidence of growth in the Southern hemisphere, is with the largest eSports arena of its sort has been developed at a high school in Johannesburg [6] further a well-known media outlet (Broad Media) has expanded its editorial staff by creating a post for an online gaming journalist [21].
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There has been an increase of eSports, leagues, and competitions. The basic objective of eSports competitions, which are organised and held as either tournaments or leagues with players who compete against one another as either professional teams or as individuals, is to win [3].eSports was viewed as a substantive hobby in which one pursues to master games which require special skills, perseverance and knowledge towards eSports being viewed as a professional pursuit rooted in a hierarchal, competitive, and regulated global environment [25].
It is evident there has been a growth of eSport tournament, leagues, and competitions. This growth can be seen in schools with Cho, Tsaasan et al. [7] stating that collegiate esports leagues are growing rapidly with school eSports sports leagues particularly in high school emerging worldwide. The expectations of the participants and viewers, as well as what drives them to support this kind of event, are mostly unknown for this sort of sport. Anderson [3], who called eSports an emerging trend and noted the lack of research on this kind of event, supports this. Additionally, as this phenomenon has grown, there have been more eSports competitions, eSports leagues, and eSports tourism [19]. This growth of eSport events, competitions and leagues offer a modern, technological web-oriented trend which not only has the potential for the destinations to create new tourism products but also the promising opportunity to for alternative tourism offering [11, 16]. eSports competitions are becoming more popular, especially among schoolchildren and college students, and if this activity were to be practiced professionally, it may result in substantial rewards. This growth of leagues in school requires the understanding of parents’ perspective towards eSports and eSports events, especially as eSport is still viewed as a new phenomenon which can grow into a new tourism sub-sector [25]. Students participating in school leagues require parental support by approving for the school to participate in the eSport league, financially as well as ability to participate in the event. Therefore, the study aimed to understand the parents’ perspective by understanding 1] the view of eSports as a form of sports, 2] To conclude the motivational elements of participants and spectators to attend on-site eSports events 3] To determine the expenses of children participating in eSports 4] Benefits of eSport as event. The main objective of this article is to determine this shift of eSport being viewed from just a leisure activity toward a more professional activity (i.e. a sport) an adoption from early adopters in regards to the diffusion of innovation by parents of children who participate in eSports events. As understanding this shift with according to Leon, Hinojosa-Ramos et al. [16] allow the event’s atmosphere, staff, hospitality as well as good feelings about the live attendee and participants be considered when designing a satisfactory experience.
This article will define eSport and the different type of eSports games as well as discuss the adopters of eSports as a sport with regards to the diffusion of innovation the methodology used in the study and the findings that emerged during the provisional semi-structured interviews with the parents of the eSports players. The discussion of this semi-structured interviews forms part of a great research study on eSports in South Africa, and these results are just preliminary results from an eSport event held high school in May 2023.
2 Literature Review
2.1 Defining eSports and the Different Type of eSports Games
eSports (Electronic Sports) as “a form of sports where the primary aspects of the sport are facilitated by electronic systems; the input of players and teams as well as the output of the eSports system are mediated by human-computer interfaces” [15]. In more simpler terms, eSports refer to competitive video gaming (broadcasted on the internet).
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eSports is unlike traditional major sports where the gamer/athletes play a single type of game, gamers/athletes in eSports compete in a wide range of games, each with its own set of nuances and target audiences [1]. All professionally played games are included in eSports, which also includes mobile games that cater to younger audiences and first-person shooter games that have a more adult-skewing audience [1].
eSports is made up of a variety of various and distinctive video games [15]. Even though FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) video games simulate ‘conventional’ sports like football, eSports is not often considered as the ‘electronic’ equivalent of a ‘traditional’ sport like athletics, soccer, or basketball [15]. As seen in Fig. 1: Snapshot of eSport games, eSports are frequently divided into distinct game genres.
Games like FIFA 20, Tekken 7, Fortnite, Overwatch, PubG Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty, Hearthstone, Dota 2, CS:GO, League of Legends, CS:GO, Pike and Shot, and Street Fighter are examples of eSports games [5, 14, 22, 27, 28]. First-person shooter (FPS), real-time strategy (RTS), sports, multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), fighting games, and mobile-specific games are the six genres that can be used to categorize the games shown in Fig. 1. The two most popular eSports genres are “First-Person Shooter” and “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena” (MOBA) [5]. Regardless, of which eSports genre, eSports encompasses tournaments, leagues, prize winnings, player/team organisations genres, games, management structures and sponsorship agreements [3]. Therefore, it can be said that eSports involves a number of different games genres including first person shooters, racing game, and sports games amongst other. These games are played competitively in either a small team or as one-on-one, with the two most popular genres of eSports being “First-Person Shooter” and “Multi-player Online Battle Arena” (MOBA). Games are normally accepted as ‘eSports’ once they have been selected for official inclusion into an international eSports competition [3].
2.2 Adoption of eSports as a Sports
Despite the fact that eSports, or competitive video gaming, has been around for more than 20 years, it is still relatively young in terms of business and is not yet considered to be a mainstream sector [15]. As a result, there is currently no widely agreed-upon definition of eSports. This is due to its recent global adoption as well as general opposition (especially from fans of traditional sports) that eSports cannot be referred to as a sport because the players'/gamers’ competence is not measured by either physical finesse or prowess as an eSports athlete is seen to be sitting down [15]. However, it has been stated that “professional gaming,” a competitive kind of computer gaming carried out in a professional setting, is sometimes compared to eSports [27]. As seen in Fig. 2: Conceptualising contemporary sport, Guttman's methodology for conceptualizing model sports outlines sports as follows and may also be used to eSports.
Play, games, competitions, and sports are the four evolving transitional stages of the conceptualizing contemporary sports model shown in Fig. 2. All sports begin with play, a world of freedom where play means completely non-utilitarian physical or mental activity with the only goal of enjoying the “doing” process. The first level includes all sports, and all sports begin with play. The second stage of play, which is divided into organized play and spontaneous play, is where the play's substance can progress. This level denotes that every play has a set of guidelines that each player must abide by. Participants in this second level of the game agree to abide by the modified game rules and to forego their purely instinctual behaviour. An organized game's rules are primarily intended to make the game more challenging to play, with the major goal of establishing such regulations being to eliminate inefficiencies. The third stage consists of competitions, where most games can be played either competitively or non-competitively; sports at this level must have a win-lose result. However, competitions can go further and be divided into two groups, namely intellectual competitions and athletic competitions [13]. According to Greenhill & Houghton [9], while eSports may need less physical effort than sports like basketball, football, and tennis, they nonetheless require as much physical effort as shooting, pool/snooker, and bowling. eSports have a high intellectual demand since they call for highly focused, polished motor skills, as well as quick and accurate hand-eye coordination [9]. It may therefore be claimed that eSports is comparable to the preliminary paradigm, as mentioned in Jia [13] and Greenhill & Houghton [9]. The fundamental content of sports is play, and the basic content of eSports is play as well. Wagner [27] used terms like “training,” “cyber fitness,” “high performing teams,” “strategy,” and “cyber-sports” to try to qualify eSports as a sort of sport. Similar to conventional sports, teams will often be accompanied by experienced coaches, dieticians, mental health specialists, and physical fitness trainers when competing in the elite leagues [22]. Because of this, the definition of eSports can help distinguish between what is generally regarded as sports and what is particularly regarded as eSports [15].
eSports has been previously marginalized as a niche or fringe activity with eSports and eSports events being regarded as new [8]. However, despite that establishments of international and national bodies, the creation of teams with uniform, coaches, management, competitions, leagues, marquee evens, endorsement deals, scholarships as well as issues such as doping and gender-related issues eSports increasing similarity and legitimacy to traditional sports events and competition is still under debate [8]. With Tjønndal & Skauge [26] adding that the thought of considering eSports as a ‘real sport’ is still being met with significant resistance from some athletes, scholars, sport leaders and sports fans.
The adoption of eSport as a sport, especially eSports tournaments can be viewed through the lens of diffusion of innovation model. Innovation is defined as a change made to an existing idea, product, or field [20]. It can therefore be argued that eSports as a sport is an innovative concept. The diffusion of innovation is depicted with a normal distribution which illustrates how fast people adapt to innovations is depicted below (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3.
Normal Distribution for diffusion of innovation.
×
According to Ahlsten et al. [2], innovators are brave, eager people who like trying out new ideas and are aware that there will be uncertainty, whereas early adopters have the power to pressure others into adopting and hasten the adoption process. With Pannekeet [23] confirming that the eSports market is on a fast track that consists of continual growth in the years to come due to its ability to be innovative as well as interest from especially sponsors and broadcasters for investment There are indications that there is a greater acceptance of eSports as a sports with Intentional Olympic Committee (IOC) considering the inclusion of eSports in the Olympic games with an announcement being made that eSports will be organized along with the traditional sporting competitions at the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024, with the Paris 2024 hosts expressing the possibility of adding eSports to the 2024 Olympic programme [26].
South Africa is still in the early stages of fully embracing eSports as a new form of sport and events within the tourism industry. According to Mahlangu and Naudé-Potgieter [18] a greater adoption and marketing of eSports, however, happened during COVID-19 when an article YOU Digital [27] was published in June 2020 promoting eSports to kids in the Generation Z demographic. In order to provide parents with pertinent information about eSports, including its benefits, regulations, and key players, BOO Games [5] put up a pamphlet titled “Parents Guide to eSports.’’ The benefits of eSports are emphasized, and these include increasing brainpower, occupying kids and keeping them out of trouble, fostering self-esteem and a sense of belonging, and teaching kids valuable life lessons like compromise, decision-making, empathy, independence, leadership, problem-solving, social skills, teamwork, and respect for others [5]. There is however a lack of research on parents’ perspective of eSport tournaments as well as have how the perceive eSport.
3 Methodology
The study used a qualitative approach utilizing a semi-structured interview. The interview method has been deemed the most useful method for this study an interview method has the potential to provide elicit rich and thick descriptions. This method furthermore gives the researchers an opportunity to clarify statements, as well as probe for additional information. A large benefit of collecting data through semi-structured interviews is that this allows potential to capture a person’s perspective of an experience or event [4]. An eSports event was held at high school in May 2023, during which this study was undertaken. It is estimated that approximately 20 parents attended the event, with six parents that agreed to participate in the interview. Each parent had a child who was participating in the eSports tournament. The eSport event was a tournament which was held against different school eSports teams.
The interviews were recorded and transcribed after the event. Thematic analysis was conducted with codes extracted from the various transcribed interviews. The two researchers further observed each other's transcriptions to confirm codes assigned. The results of the thematic analysis will be discussed in the subsequent section.
4 Findings and Discussion
Parents were asked how many eSports events their child/ren (also known as participants) participate annually and whether they travel for these eSports events.
All parents stated that participants in eSport events (tournaments) are relatively new players, as well as being a part of an official eSports team. All the participants have been practicing participating in tournaments for 1 to 2 years. All participants who competed has competed in 1 to 3 eSports events so far. All event that they have participated in has been their home province of Gauteng and they haven’t travelled outside the province requiring them to travel far or require accommodation in order to participate in the various tournaments.
This illustrates that’s eSports tournaments and eSports teams are still in their foundation phase with children participating in 3 or less events. The tournaments is also limited to the participants home province. It is evident that there is an emerging area of interest for young players. As more players become more experienced in eSport the industry is more likely to continue to grow. According to Leon, Hinojosa-Ramos et al. [16] and Ioannis, Ioulia [11], the development of eSport events, competitions, and leagues presents a cutting-edge, technological web-oriented trend that not only presents a promising opportunity for destinations to develop new tourism products, but also presents a promising opportunity for alternative tourism offerings. Consequently, this offers Gauteng province the chance to develop tourist goods for both players and fans.
Parents were asked how much do they spend in year on eSports equipment, software, hardware games etc.
Parents stated that they currently are not spending a lot of money on eSports equipment or eSport event registration. This can be ascribed to various reasons such as a) the school supplied them with the eSports games and licensing for all the software b) the parent is still waiting to see if the eSports participant is going show a continued interest in eSports, before any further investment. One parent mentioned that they will look for a sponsorship if their child seeks to become an eSports professional. They also did not view eSports as an expensive form of sport. One specific parent, who had spent R20 000 in the year 2023 on eSports equipment, stated “spending money on eSports is a once-off thing, you buy the laptop and the software. If my child were to play soccer, I would have to buy him a new kit every year.’’ c) They view the registration fee for the event reasonable for what the eSport participant is getting out of it.
According to the normal diffusion of innovation the are parents who are early adopters and scribe to eSports being a Sport. They also don’t deem eSport any more expensive than other sports in which their children participate in. The low cost of entry can also see a greater adoption of eSports which will result in the eSports moving from early adopter to early majority in the coming years. This will also then result in the increase in revenue for the eSport event through registration.
Parents were asked if they will be staying at the eSports events itself or whether they make a whole trip of an eSport event and visit other attractions.
Parents indicated that they would be staying at the event and were not interested in participating in any other activities, such as shopping during the event. They wanted to be present at the event and support their children. One parent did indicate that they would go and have celebratory lunch somewhere after the event. Another parent mentioned that they used these school events as a time to view schools as they are currently deciding which high school their child will attend. It was observed that the eSports participants and parents were purchasing food and drinks throughout the day at the school's catering facility.
The eSport arena benefits the most from hosting the eSports event, as parents and participants are buying food and drinks at the venue. As the event is being held in the participants home province the venue benefits the most, as other sporting event in which people purchase food and drinks at the venue.
Parents were asked whether they view eSports as a form of sport of as a form of entertainment.
A number of parents initially viewed eSports as a form of entertainment for their children. Now that the eSports participants are starting to participate in tournaments and playing it more seriously, parents are changing their stance and starting to view eSports as a form of sport. The reasons for this were the expected teamwork, the commitment to practice the game, and the analytical skills required.
According to parents’ responses and normal diffusion of innovation, parents have shifted their belief that eSport is a substantive hobby as defined by Thompson, Taheri et al. [25] toward viewing eSports as sports. Various sources such as BOO Games [5] and YOU Digital [28] have mentioned benefits of eSports, parents have also mentioned the benefits that they have observed in their children. This aligns with the normal diffusion of innovation, with these parents being early adopters. The acknowledgement of eSports as a sports can also lead to more resources being allocated to school programs as well as professional eSports teams. This also imply that the benefits of that destination and tourism receive from ‘traditional’ sports can be experienced with the growth of eSport as stated by Ioannis & Ioulia [11], eSports tourism, according to shares multiple similarities with ‘traditional’ sports tourism.
Parents were asked if they are aware that eSports can be used for educational purposes?
Parents were very open to the notion that eSports can be used for educational purposes. Numerous parents commented, “this is the way the world is going, with technology”.
According to Ahlsten et al. [2], innovators are brave, eager people who like trying out new ideas and are aware that there will be uncertainty. The parents have accepted that there as been a shift in the world and that eSports was viewed as a substantive hobby to a professional pursuit [25], which can have educational benefits for their children.
5 Conclusion
The study found that parents have a positive perspective towards eSports events and are supportive of their children participating in them. The study also found that eSports events are relatively new and that there is a lack of research on parents’ perspective of eSports tournaments. However, with the growth of this industry, especially with the support of parents who fund and give children to participant in this new industry also presents an opportunity for tourism industry to tap into this new market. The tourism industry and the esports industry can work together to develop new tourism products and destinations that cater to esports fans and promote esports as a new trend in the tourism industry. The study recommends further research to understand the motivations of participants and spectators to attend on-site eSports events, the expenses of children participating in eSports, and the benefits of eSports as an event. Overall, the study provides valuable insights into the growing popularity of eSports events and the need for further research in this area.
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