Competitive professional video gaming, or esports, is a rapidly growing part of the entertainment industry, with an estimated global audience of 335 million people in 2017, with 143 million being active spectators. Esports events have become increasingly popular, attracting tens of thousands of attendees in real life, and hundreds of thousands online. But very little research has been done into what motivates these audiences.

"Esports has emerged as a new form of culture and entertainment, that is unique in comparison to other forms of entertainment, as it is almost fully reliant on computer-human interaction and the internet," says Dr Max Sjöblom, a former PhD student at Aalto University and project researcher at Gamification Group of Tampere University, now at tech startup Kast. He was one of the pioneers of investigating the behaviour of these new audiences.

Person-v-person computer gaming as a competitive sport grew out of LAN-parties, where gamers would gather and connect their computers together by a network.

但此举在大领域的大型客户的意思s that events are now taking on more of the characteristics of traditional sporting events. To fully understand the appeal of live events for esports spectators, and how this appeal related to how fans watch esports online at home, researchers set out to question attendees of live esports events and online-only fans. This study combined quantitative data from both an online sample (N = 888) and a sample obtained at the Assembly 2016 live event (N = 221).

Social Interaction key

The results show that fans around the world are travelling to areas drawn primarily by social interaction and the excitement of being near the sports stars they're fans of. Fans watching at home online rated: 'drama', 'acquisition of knowledge', 'appreciation of skill', 'novelty', 'aesthetics' and 'enjoyment of aggression' higher than live attendees. Meanwhile the fans in the stadium rate social interaction and physical attractiveness higher than those at home.

"To us, it seems logical that fans of live esports events are fans of the social interaction element. Esports are predominantly consumed via online broadcasts, where social interaction is facilitated only through instant messaging chat windows. The typical mode of consumption offers less direct human interaction between spectators than in live events. So it seems natural that those who seek gratification through social aspects of the games are more drawn to attend live events." explained Dr Sjöblom

Enjoying 'Vicarious achievement' and 'novelty' was positively associated with whether or not a fan would recommend esports to others.