“Not Only for a Celebration of Competitive Overwatch but Also for National Pride”: Sportificating the Overwatch World Cup 2016

Abstract

While the most popular forms of organized competitive digital gaming, also known as eSports, have begun finding their place within and in relation to both mainstream entertainment culture and the field of traditional sports, their history is one of struggling to be accepted as “true sports.” Partly because of this history, great effort has been put into the sportification of eSports by presenting competitions in familiar ways adapted from traditional sports. In this article, we examine the process of sportification of eSports in the context of tournament broadcasts. We analyze the Overwatch World Cup 2016 tournament, comparing its final broadcast to the 2014 FIFA World Cup’s final broadcast, looking for similarities and differences in the areas of broadcast structure, commentary and expertise, game presentation, game highlights and acknowledgments, teams and players, and audience.

Social motivations of live-streaming viewer engagement on Twitch

“…While that particular discussion is still ongoing, esports clearly has shared DNA with traditional sports, as exemplified by how similar top-level esports broadcasts are to those seen in traditional sports (Turtiainen et al, 2018). This is particularly evident in events featuring national teams, focusing on the nationalist aspects prevalent in such sporting events, but also including more general sports practices such as similarities in the broadcast structure, the commentary itself, how teams and players are presented, the showing of highlights and replays, as well as the capture of audience sentiment (Turtiainen et al, 2018).…”

“…While that particular discussion is still ongoing, esports clearly has shared DNA with traditional sports, as exemplified by how similar top-level esports broadcasts are to those seen in traditional sports (Turtiainen et al, 2018). This is particularly evident in events featuring national teams, focusing on the nationalist aspects prevalent in such sporting events, but also including more general sports practices such as similarities in the broadcast structure, the commentary itself, how teams and players are presented, the showing of highlights and replays, as well as the capture of audience sentiment (Turtiainen et al, 2018). Other concepts that stem from traditional sports have also been investigated within esports, for example sportsmanship, fair play and doping (Carter and Gibbs, 2013;Irwin and Naweed, 2018;Karhulahti and Kimppa, 2018), collegiate level esports (Keiper et al, 2017;Schaeperkoetter et al, 2017), sport venues (Jenny et al, 2018), ergonomics (Paravizo and de Souza, 2018), and the legal rights and career aspects of players/athletes (Bayliss, 2016;Salo, 2017).…”

Can Esports Substitute Traditional Sports? The Convergence of Sports and Video Gaming during the Pandemic and Beyond

“…The first theme is focused on how sports principles and elements are adopted in the institutionalization, commercialization or professionalization of video gaming, or "sportification". For example, Pizzo and his colleagues [35] examined the institutional creation strategies used within intercollegiate esports and identified the in-fluential role of traditional sports organizations (e.g., athletics department) on program development; Turtiainen et al [36] compared esports tournament the Overwatch World Cup 2016 to the 2014 FIFA World Cup and contended that the similarities in media representation (e.g., broadcast structure, commentary, and game presentation) mirrored the "sportification" process of major esports events. Another main line of research is concerned with the adoption of video gaming elements or content in a range of sporting contexts.…”

View, Play and Pay? – The Relationship between Consumption of Gaming Video Content and Video Game Playing and Buying

“…visual sponsorship placement on game arena, sponsored teams etc.) [44]. It should be noted that, in addition to traditional sponsorship placements, esports features a commercial product at the centre of esports itself (the video game being played) and esports events and tournaments are also often produced with commercial third-party representatives (such as the game developers or event organisers).…”