Virtual games meet physical playground: exploring and measuring motivations for live esports event attendance

Abstract

The spectacular rise of esports and its live events have drawn increasing interests from sport and leisure studies. Little information, however, is known on motives behind spectators’ attendance of esports events. Based on a mixed-method design consisting of data collected in cross-cultural settings, we developed and validated an eight-factor measurement scale related to the motives of attending live esports events. In this study, we contend that esports event creates a space where virtual and physical experience are mutually constituted. While motives found in traditional sports and event research are present in the current study, motives unique to esports events are also highlighted, particularly related to its embodied physicality. The study further reveals that male attendees are more likely to be driven by the opportunities of knowledge acquisition, game drama, and social interaction than their female counterparts. This study, therefore, makes novel contributions to empirical knowledge on consumers of competitive gaming events.