A study on the spectatorship at eSports stadium In the scope of experience economy theory.

Abstract

As the modern society comes into the new era of innovation and technology, eSports industry has been expected to become a new innovative business with higher growth potential, along with the expansion of leisure industry and high-end culture demands. As such, eSports has been settled as one of the most popular spectating recreational activity with increasing number of visitors to the stadium. a spectatorship has become a significant part of the whole eSports industry. Evidently, number of eSports venues have enormously increased for the last decade, mainly in Korea and North America. As stressed, eSports market drastically expands, the significance of its marketing strategies is also growing. Due to the exponential growth of eSports, its academic value starts to grow at the same time. However, due to the ambiguity between the sports industry and game industry, its academic has long been underestimated unlike traditional sports. As its innate concept was originated from the game industry, its academic research lacks in both width and depth. Thus, the main purpose of study is to analyze the experiences of visitors to eSports stadium and how it is related to their experiential satisfaction. Accordingly, at the same time, perception towards eSports venue of the industry experts in order to examine whether both sides are interacting promptly. The research is designed to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research in order to understand the correlation between the experience factors and satisfaction level of the content users and to understand the overall perception upon eSports stadium, especially in perspective of experiential marketing by marketers and contents providers. For quantitative research, the survey has been conducted to 235 visitors at Munhak Sports Complex on November 3rd, 2018, who came to see the final match of 2018 League of Legends World Championship. Using IBM SPSS 25.0 program, frequency analysis, T-test, one-way ANOVA, post-hoc, correlation analysis between parameters, and multiple regression analysis have been conducted. On the other hand, for qualitative research, in-depth interview was designed and conducted subject selected group of people who have hands-on experience in eSports industry. through the interviews from the experts of eSports industry, the overall opinion towards eSports stadium and its significance in scope of experience economy would be discussed. To be more specific, four dimensions of experience economy (entertainment, escapism, education, and esthetic) would be reviewed and analyzed based on their interview. Further, the problems, roles, and future would be discussed and analyzed as well. In conclusion, in consumer’s perspective, esthetic experience is the most significant experience area where spectators found intention to revisit the most. Then, followed by esthetic experience, escapism and entertainment experience have positive relationship with intention to revisit. In contrast to the hypothesis, not all experience has relation to revisit intention rate. Rather, educational experience does not have correlation with intention to revisit of spectators. On the other hand, experts with hands-on experiences in the eSports industry expected the entertainment experience would evoke the most engagement that would result in revisit to the venue. Though, there was little discordance- which is not critically significant but still means something. Thus, the results imply that there is an opportunity to improve the user’s experience if the marketers focus on the particular dimension, which are esthetic and escapist experiences in this case.