In Which Context Can Esport Find Its Place in Switzerland
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
In which context can eSport find its place in Switzerland Bachelor Project submitted for the degree of Bachelor of Science HES in International Business Management by Nicolas FOSCHIA Bachelor Project Advisor: Guillaume MATHELIER – Professor at HEG Geneva the 3rd June of 2020 Haute école de gestion de Genève (HEG-GE) International Business Management Declaration This Bachelor Project is submitted as part of the final examination requirements of the Haute école de gestion de Genève, for the Bachelor of Science HES-SO in International Business Management. The student accepts the terms of the confidentiality agreement if one has been signed. The use of any conclusions or recommendations made in the Bachelor Project, with no prejudice to their value, engages neither the responsibility of the author, nor the adviser to the Bachelor Project, nor the jury members nor the HEG. "I attest that I have personally authored this work without using any sources other than those cited in the bibliography. Furthermore, I have sent the final version of this document for analysis by the plagiarism detection software stipulated by the school and by my adviser". Geneva the 3rd June of 2020 Nicolas FOSCHIA Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who contributed in a way or another to the redaction of this paper. First, my supervisor Mr Guillaume Mathelier, he remained available at any time to answer my questions, in addition to that, his opinion and advise have been very helpful throughout the all process of this research paper. Secondly, I would like to thank all the interviewees and the person that have answered the survey for sharing their time and knowledge. Their contribution has been very helpful. Therefore, I would like to thank Mr. Reto Canova, Mr. Tufan Nergiz, Mr. Lucas Argentini, Ms. Vanessa Do and the 111 person that have answered the survey. Finally, I want to thank my brother Mathieu for its precious advice, Clémence for her constant support and all my friend and family members that have been present for me during these lasts’ months. In which context can eSport find its place in Switzerland iii Nicolas FOSCHIA Executive Summary ESport is an activity that, although almost as old as video games, is much less popular. However, in recent times, the popularity of this activity has been steadily increasing. Indeed, events related to eSport are becoming more numerous and their audience continues to increase. We are here talking about an economy that generates billions of dollars in revenue per year. The literature review brings valuable information about how this industry works, so that people who do not know eSport can familiarize themselves with the different actors in this industry. They will also discover that the eSport industry have much more in common with traditional sport that we might think. When writing this work, we sought to determine "in which context can eSport find its place in Switzerland" in order to compete at an international level. For this we have therefore, during the literature review, identified the success and failure factors that the eSports industry could encounter in a country. The results of the research carried out during the literature review therefore enabled us to identify six success factors as well as six barriers, which have helped to formulate hypotheses regarding the development of eSports in Switzerland. Once these different factors of success and failure have been identified, the objective was to compare them with the situation in Switzerland, therefore interviews were conducted with different active actors within the eSport industry in Switzerland. In addition to that, a survey has been conducted on the local population. The results obtained therefore allowed us to determine that Switzerland is a good market to practice eSport as an amateur or semi-pro, because there is a growing interest from the public and the industry is rising locally, but in terms of professional eSport the result is different. Indeed, even though the identified barrier did not seem to be a major problem, none of the main success factor are present in Switzerland, which will make it complicated to catch up with the most eSport developed countries. However, if one day the concerned actors would decide to act on the promotion of eSport locally, things could evolve in the country and Switzerland could become one of the main eSport nation. In which context can eSport find its place in Switzerland Nicolas FOSCHIA iv Contents In which context can eSport find its place in Switzerland ........................................ 1 Declaration..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... iii Executive Summary ..................................................................................................... iv Contents......................................................................................................................... v List of Tables ............................................................................................................... vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................. vii 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 2. Research objectives .............................................................................................. 4 3. Literature review .................................................................................................... 5 3.1 The eSport ecosystem ............................................................................... 5 3.1.1 Teams/eSport Organization .............................................................. 6 3.1.2 Composition of a team ...................................................................... 6 3.1.3 Revenue stream ................................................................................ 7 3.2 Games ......................................................................................................... 8 3.3 Leagues/Tournaments ............................................................................. 10 3.3.1 eSport Leagues: .............................................................................. 10 3.3.2 eSport tournaments: ....................................................................... 10 3.4 Platforms ................................................................................................... 11 3.5 Fans ........................................................................................................... 12 3.6 Game developers + publishers ............................................................... 14 3.7 Brands + advertisers ................................................................................ 15 3.8 Investors ................................................................................................... 16 3.8.1 What is the situation ........................................................................ 16 3.8.2 Who are the investors ..................................................................... 17 3.8.3 What are the investment categories?.............................................. 18 3.9 What do we learn from this ecosystem? ............................................... 24 3.10 What are the main barriers for the eSport expansion? ........................ 25 3.11 What does a country need to be successful? ....................................... 28 3.11.1 Government support ....................................................................... 28 3.11.2 National organism ........................................................................... 30 3.11.3 Dedicated infrastructures ................................................................ 31 3.11.4 Team Organization ......................................................................... 33 3.11.5 Players ............................................................................................ 34 3.11.6 Fan basis ........................................................................................ 37 4. Analysis ................................................................................................................ 37 4.1 Research Methodology : ......................................................................... 37 4.2 Data collection: ........................................................................................ 38 4.2.1 Qualitative : ..................................................................................... 38 In which context can eSport find its place in Switzerland v Nicolas FOSCHIA 4.2.2 Quantitative : ................................................................................... 40 4.3 Analysis of the interviews. ...................................................................... 41 4.3.1 Individual ......................................................................................... 42 4.3.2 Collective Analysis .......................................................................... 50 4.4 Analysis of the Survey ............................................................................. 57 4.4.1 Population ....................................................................................... 58 4.4.2 Knowledge about eSport ................................................................