A STUDY OF THE ESPORTS TECHNOLOGICAL PARADIGM AND ITS INNOVATIVE DYNAMICS

The increasing popularity and media coverage regarding eSports contemporarily to an often-commented decline of traditional sports instigates the questioning of a possible change of paradigm taking place. In this scenario, a multifaceted analysis is conducted in order to understand the context surrounding this hypothesis and to comprehend the involved dynamics, with the ultimate objective of finding a satisfactory answer. An initial perimeter is set and the object of study regarding traditional sports encompasses mass entertainment sports, that have intense public appeal and are transmitted via professionalized vehicles to the audience, such as soccer. Then a method for the analysis is established as a sequence of three study fields, a Market Overview, a Strategy Analysis, and an Innovation Analysis. Each of those presents a sequence of pertinent methods and tools. The proposed method also establishes a subsequential discussion of the analyses to extract results. The Market Overview reveals a greater comprehension of the eSports audience profile, a predominantly young and male public. The Strategy Analysis is composed of three tools the allow a better comprehension of both eSports and traditional sports industries, as well as comparisons between them. Finally, the Innovation Analysis characterizes the eSports innovation under frameworks and defines the assessed paradigms. A discussion encompassing the analyses points to a likely paradigm shift, considering the substantial increase in some eSports’ audience size and an apparent plateau in the one of traditional sports. Additionally, eSports have a more consistent manner to provide novel and digital content, shown to be more demanded and appreciated by young generations. Nevertheless, more data is needed to make a statistically reliable conclusion of whether that audience size observation holds.