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Esports Live Broadcast: an Appealing Media for Business-To-Consumer Communication

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Esports Live Broadcast: an Appealing Media for Business-To-Consumer Communication Internationale Betriebswirtschaft B.A. Hochschule Furtwangen University, Business School Supervised by Prof. Dr. Christoph Mergard eSports live broadcast: An appealing media for business-to-consumer communication A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor’s of Arts in the faculty of economy by Daniel Fritz Matriculation number 248343 IBW 7 Pestalozzistr. 21 78176 Blumberg [email protected] June 2018 Table of contents Sworn Statement........................................................................................................................... II List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... III Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ IV Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 Scope of study ....................................................................................................................... 2 Literature review ........................................................................................................................... 4 Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 7 1. Examination of the eSports industry and eSport live broadcasts ............................................. 8 1.1. What is eSports? ....................................................................................................... 8 1.2. Examination of eSport live broadcasts ......................................................................... 10 2. Approaches to marketing communications ............................................................................ 13 2.1. AIDA model................................................................................................................... 13 2.2. Branding ....................................................................................................................... 15 3. Instruments of marketing communications ............................................................................ 17 3.1. Advertising during eSport broadcasts .......................................................................... 17 3.2. Product placements ..................................................................................................... 20 3.3. Sponsorships and their value to eSports ...................................................................... 23 3.4. Media coverage, narratives and celebrity endorsements ........................................... 27 4. Research .................................................................................................................................. 29 4.1. Findings ........................................................................................................................ 30 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 42 References ................................................................................................................................... 44 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................... 49 Online survey and questionnaire ........................................................................................ 49 I Sworn Statement I hereby solemnly declare on my oath that the work presented has been carried out by me alone without any form of illicit assistance. All sources have been fully quoted. __________________________________ _______________________ Place, Date Signature II List of Figures Figure 1: AIDA model according to Lewis in form of a funnel ……………………… 11 Figure 2: Strategies and corresponding modalities of product placement based on Russel and Tiwsakul, Hackley and Szmigin ……………………………….. 21 Figure 3: Global revenue of the eSports market split by income stream …………….. 24 Figure 4: Age distribution among eSports viewership spread into age classes ………. 31 Figure 5: Weekly live eSports consumption per age class …………………………… 32 Figure 6: Brand and product remembrance of repetitive commercials among gamers.. 33 Figure 7: Repetitive commercials versus one-time only commercials ……………….. 34 Figure 8: Brand remembrance among viewers open to audible placements …………. 36 Figure 9: Screen-placed brand logo remembrance based on placement awareness…... 37 Figure 10: Brand associations towards brands sponsoring teams ……………………. 38 Figure 11: Likeliness of viewers doing research about highlighted players …………. 39 Figure 12: Absolute frequencies of favourable brand associations using celebrity endorsements ……………………………………………………. 40 Figure 13: Influence of professional players on buying decisions of 16 to 24-year olds ……………………………………………………………………….. 41 Table 1: Interpretation of high and low durations of the respective categories………. 32 Table 2: Absolute frequencies of perceptions regarding gaming-related commercials. 35 III Abstract Organized, competitive computer gaming, also referred to as eSports, are emerging sports within the sports entertainment industry. The industry generated almost 700 million U.S. Dollar in revenue and leading eSport titles attract millions of viewers to their events. This study aims to explore eSport live broadcasts of four leading titles and their appeal to be used as a communication media for marketers. It adopted secondary data from academic and scientific studies, journals and books from the fields of eSports, business and sports management to examine commercials, product placements, sponsorships and celebrity endorsements in regards of their applicability and effectiveness within eSports. Quantitative research in form of a survey among eSports viewership was carried out to gather data on viewership consumption patterns and perceptions towards said communication instruments and their effectiveness. Findings suggest that the effectiveness of commercials rely on the timing shown during broadcasts. Product placements can be applied in many ways and show high effectiveness in terms of brand recognition in any form. Celebrity endorsements are highly ambiguous in terms of their applicability and effectiveness. IV Introduction Organized, competitive computer gaming, also referred to as eSports (Wagner, 2006), has captured the attention of millions of fans globally over the last few years. Computer games such as the currently most played game League of Legends with over 60 million active monthly players worldwide are watched daily by millions of people on live streaming platforms. Recently, these streaming platforms such as Twitch.tv (in the following only referred to as Twitch) and Youtube Gaming enjoyed increasing popularity due to the coverage of eSport events. Researchers who gathered data on viewership patterns using Twitch’s API found that 95% of the viewers on Twitch tune in on primarily the top 10 titles to watch, which only represent 0.04% of all available games on Twitch (Deng, Cuadrado, Tyson & Uhlig, 2015). According to their research a major key pattern was identified which corresponds to sharp rises of viewership numbers for major events in the scene such as the League of Legends World Championship or the Counter Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships. These major and unique events can be compared to traditional sport events such as the Super Bowl or the FIFA World Cup which draw a lot of attention even from people who do not consider themselves fans of that sport. Beside those unique events, there are also weekly highlights for European and north American viewers to watch which are the European League of Legends Championship Series and the North American League of Legends Championship Series respectively. Professional teams from Europe and Northern America are competing, similar to traditional sports, in a national League system where matches are held on a weekly basis to determine the best team and their opportunity to represent their region at the World Championships. These Leagues also take place in South Korea and China which both are leading Leagues in terms of popularity and viewership even from viewers from abroad and comparatively smaller regions such as Japan, Brazil, Turkey, and Russia. Media companies such as the German company Turtle Entertainment, the Korean TV channel Ongamenet (also known as OGN) or the American media company Turner Broadcasting Systems (in the following referred to as TBS) are broadcasting eSport events in co-operation with streaming platforms to the viewers. Riot Games which started out as the game developer of League of Legends expanded its portfolio and set-up its own in-house 1 production and broadcasting teams and facilities in order to satisfy demand of broadcasting eSport events of its own title. Given the huge amount of monthly active players, Riot Games reported that the finals of the 2017 League of Legends World Championship were viewed by 57,6 million unique viewers (Riot Games, 2018). Total viewing hours of this four-week event exceeded 1.2 billion hours. Endemic companies within the gaming industry such as hardware producers Intel, AMD and Razer or peripheral producers such as Logitech have for long been partners of eSport events in the past. Due to
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