Content area
Full text
1. Introduction
The electronic sports (eSports) has rapidly gained considerable attention in the past couple of years (Macey et al., 2022). It is an organized tournament played virtually in the video games forms (Xiao, 2020) on various devices including gaming platforms and personal computer systems. The internet has catalyzed the rapid growth and popularity of eSports. The number of worldwide spectators was 465.1 million in 2021, and global revenue generated through eSports is estimated around $1.0bn in 2021 and predicted to reach $1.6 by the end of year 2022 (Wijman, 2021). While eSports have attained acceptance as a legitimate competitive sport, it is not free of negative aspects. For instance, in some instances, it results in player exploitation, illegal betting and performance enhancement through the use of drugs, for example, Adderall (Wyllie, 2018). It also sometimes results in psychiatric issues (if engagement increased the excessive level), health issues and interpersonal problems such as family conflicts (Wattanapisit et al., 2020; Yin et al., 2020). Despite these issues, the eSports trend is continuously expanding in Asian countries, such as Pakistan and Malaysia (Hollebeek et al., 2022a, 2022b, Abbasi et al., 2020a, Abbasi et al., 2023). The competitive video-gaming has started to gain momentum because of eSports tournaments, host events and broadcasts the video games.
In a short time, this industry has accomplished exceptional growth, surpassing both the music and movie industries in maximizing revenue during the past decade (Pannekeet, 2019). The trend of people engagement in eSport has gained momentum in the COVID-19 pandemic, as the physical sports events are no longer available because of prolonged lockdown. There is, however, increasing preference of eSport over outdoor sports because of time constraints associated with physical sports, in-house availability of eSports facilities, virtual community engagement (VCE) and continuous innovation that is taking place in the eSport industry (Mastromartino et al., 2020). Esports has been reported to help players release psychological stress, manage emotions (Villani et al., 2018; Pizzo et al., 2022) and engage in virtual community building, which in turn influence players’ well-being. Given the importance of eSports gaming, this study aims to figure out the role of consumer eSports engagement (CeSE) to derive potential eSports-related consumption behaviors. Abbasi et...