Sukupolvet videopelien turnajaisissa : e-urheilun markkinoiden ikärakenne

Abstract

Digital gaming attracts people of all ages. Nevertheless, professional esports (also known as electronic sports, e-sports, or eSports) is dominated by under 35 year olds. In this paper, e-sports market is analysed by focusing on the performance of different age-groups. Younger generations play more digital games and dominate e-sports scene, but also older people enjoy playing various video games. Two separate datasets are analysed for testing whether age is a statistically significant explanatory variable for success in professional e-sports tournaments. According to the empirical results, success in e-sports tournaments decreases with the player’s age. The best results are gained when the players are under 25 years old. Negative relationship between age and e-sports success is confirmed by analysing both 100 best e-sports players and 100 oldest players. E-sports is gaining increasing popularity in the future and therefore it will also attract more fans amongst the birth cohorts of “boomers” and “Generation X”.