Esports – an Avenue for the Future of Economic Research
Loading...
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Technická Univerzita v Liberci
Technical university of Liberec, Czech Republic
Technical university of Liberec, Czech Republic
Abstract
Esports is a rapidly growing industry with structural and behavioral characteristics that closely resemble traditional sports, positioning it as a promising arena for empirical economic research. Building on the premise that sports serve as valuable natural laboratories for testing economic theory, this study argues that esports may present an even more compelling setting for such research. A bibliometric analysis was conducted, collecting all articles from the Web of Science Core Collection that included the terms esport, e-sport, esports, or e-sports in their title, abstract, or keywords. Each publication was categorized by disciplinary domain, with particular focus on economics and its adjacent fields. The findings reveal that while esports research has expanded across various disciplines, economics research remains relatively sparse, with fewer than two publications per year over the past two decades, despite the fact that esports data is abundant, high-quality, and increasingly accessible. The study emphasizes the unique advantages of esports data, such as its precision, scale, and quality, and argues that esports offers a largely untapped opportunity for economists to study decision-making and incentive structures in highly controlled yet naturalistic environments. This article further highlights potential sources of esports data, encouraging economic researchers to consider esports in their future scientific endeavors.
Description
Subject(s)
Esports, Bibliometric Analysis, Sports Economics
Citation
ISSN
ISBN
978-80-7494-747-6