Online Esports Engagement: Motivational Antecedents and Marketing Outcomes

Esport is becoming one of the fastest-growing sports branches and providing remarkable advertising and sponsorship opportunities for brands. This research aims to understand what motivates online esports spectators to engage in esports and the way that motivations and engagement influence their purchase intention toward advertised and sponsored products during esports events. The proposed model was tested using structural equation modeling with 436 esports spectators. The results imply that esports engagement has mainly been driven by parasocial interaction between online esports spectators and players. Various motivations were found to act upon the emersion of different esports engagement dimensions, among which a hierarchy of effects existed. Affective and behavioral esports engagement positively influenced advertising sponsorship effectiveness during esports events. Along with providing a definition of esports engagement, this research creates a theoretical linkage between uses and gratifications theory, sports consumption motivations, and esports engagement; and explores how esports engagement leads to the willingness to buy products advertised during esports events and/or products of official esports sponsors. Keywords: esports, motivation, sponsorship, uses and gratifications, parasocial interaction