C
ultivate a successful esport—or so the
theory goes—and reap the benefits
elsewhere in your game. I’ve heard several
variations on this idea over years of
esports writing, where companies
sometimes talk about pro gaming in similar terms to
supermarket loss leaders—unprofitable in themselves,
but able to attract players who then spend money on
the game. But a new partnership between Emory
University and publisher Hi-Rez Studios aims to put
that theory to the test.“We’ve always believed that watching esports helps our
game business,” says Todd Harris, Hi-Rez cofounder and
president of its esports broadcasting subsidiary, Skillshot
Media. “There was an appetite in the community to play,
[and] publishers started to support that with prize money
and structures and casting and production.”
He goes on: “Publishers did that because the thought
was that by supporting esports from a business standpoint
those fans will play the game longer, maybe they’ll even
spend more money. So I think a lot of publishers have this
intuition. But it’s not that someone’s come up with
research that says, ‘Yep that actually can be quantified’.”
This is where Professor Mike Lewis’s team at Emory
University comes in. Lewis is the director of theCaption goes in
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Marketing Analytics Center, where his research ranges
from traditional sports to politics. He has been aware of
esports for a while and Harris is actually a guest speaker
on his sports analytics course. “Over time, I think we just
discovered a mutual interest in understanding fandom,”
says Lewis. “Hi-Rez has the data and Emory can supply
some academic horsepower.”
His initial hypothesis is that esports will increase
engagement (measured in terms of playing, winning and
making purchases) “because it provides a focal
community or a place for interaction”. Testing this
claim involves trying to isolate how behavior changes
when players watch esports. “What we do is try and
construct samples of watchers and non-watchers that
have very similar levels of activity prior to exposure to
esports programming.”RESPECTING PRIVACY
In case you’re (entirely reasonably) wondering about the
sensitivity and granularity of player data involved, Harris
tells me that it’s already anonymous when they pass it to
Emory: “The data is anonymized to not even include
attributes like gender and age and other things.” Lewis
adds, “We are very respectful of player privacy. We never
look at any individual level identifying information beyond
country of origin.”No idea which region
these fans are
rooting for.Data
Crunch
Assessing
esports fandom
is different to
analyzing
traditional sports
fandom. In some
respects the
data is richer—
for example, you
could track what
players do in far
greater detail.
But in others,
traditional sports
have the upper
hand: e.g. they’re
so widely
covered that
decades of
market-level data
and win rates are
readily available.FA N SE RV IC E
HI-REZ and EMORY UNIVERSITY tackle a basic esports assumption
Special