Are eSports players comparable to traditional athletes? A cross-sectional study

Abstract

There is some debate as to whether professional eSports players should be regarded as athletes in the traditional sense. With an eye toward addressing this controversy, this study was undertaken with the aim of analyzing elite eSports players' characteristics and their training and competition routines, and of comparing them with data on their counterparts in traditional sports. Fifty-one elite eSports players answered an ad hoc online questionnaire that gathered data on their basic traits, general training and competition habits, level of regular physical activity, and injuries sustained during the 2018-2019 season. The results indicated that elite eSports players have a considerable training load (38.37±20.33 h/week) and use strategies to improve their performance (i.e., warm-ups, 73.91%; resistance training, 74.19%; psychological training 31.25%). However, some of these activities are not generally designed or supervised by qualified professionals. Meanwhile, some of the players reported injuries (13.04%) that had led to losses in competition time ranging from one day to more than a month. In terms of the comparison with traditional athletes, our findings show that eliteeSports players seem to experience a similar training load and apply comparable strategies to boost their sports results. As such, they can be properly considered professional athletes, but players, the eSports industry, and the teams' staffs should be more aware of the most appropriate strategies to preserve long-term health and avoid burn-out.