Link to Show – https://soundcloud.com/george-mattock-754024698/fb550-group-4-radio-show/s-PCl8b

Radio Script

Hypothesis – Esports viewership will eventually surpass that of traditional sports

QUAL / Mixed PAPER – What is eSports and why do people watch it? (ResearchGate, 2017)

• Uses Quant & Qual methodologies to measure the reasons people watch Esports
• Uses anecdotal (QUAL) accounts, 

QUANT PAPER – (PDF) Can ESports Unseat the Sports Industry? Some Preliminary Evidence from the United States (ResearchGate, 2018)

• Contains plenty of viewership figures (published and observed) and includes demographic statistics of esports 
• Compares figures and statistics between E/sports to draw its conclusions 

Show Script / Notes

• (A) Show Introduction 
  • People introductions
  • Introduce the hypothesis
• (A) Why this subject? Why is it significant? 
  • Interesting topic in an upcoming market
  • Research insights can allow traditional sports to judge the threat of Esports (demographics)
  • Esports can measure their success on their viewership

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• (G) QUAL / MIXED paper intro – methodologies used (focus on QUAL elements) (Gratton and Jones, 2005, p.15)
  • What is esports and why do people watch it? 
  • Methodologies, data gained by Interviewing esports fans who regularly watched events on the internet. 
  • Constructive methodology, they have an original hypothesis & they went out to gain data to confirm this. 
  • Online survey from  February 26, 2015 -, 23rd March 2015 
• Extra details
  • 75 % traffic coming from subreddits, 15% facebook – 100% from social platforms. No “traditional” means 
  • 888 ‘usable’ answers received 
  • Raffled gift certificates to increase response rate 
  • Convenience sampling because its not 100% random, it was put out to socials and will give a biased sample, because they would only see it if they had a prior interest in esports. 
  • Define Ontology  (Bryman, 2016) – constructivist – social factors determine the future and present of both eSports and regular sports 
  • (G) Advantages of QUAL / MIXED paper / Qual elements
  • Users Gratification Theory, Audience Digest preferences
  • Use UGT to to talk about who watches and why they watch the content and use that info to project who may watch the content in future (producers can tailor their games/ events to fulfil their audience –  leading to increased viewership)
• (J) Disadvantages of QUAL / MIXED paper / Qual elements
  • More opinionated/ results are based on what the person giving the information believes (e.g. interviews require open questions)
  • Explain Likert scale (Bertram, 2007, p.1)
  • Dislike the Likert scale as a form of collecting data as it attempts to quantify option that might not be quantifiable

————————————————————————————————-

• (M) QUANT paper intro – methodologies used 
  • Viewer figures and statistics compare between Esports and sports (SuperData, 2016)
  • Data is secondary and compiled from data sources and directly from published sources (such as game developers themselves) 

• (G) Advantages of QUANT paper
  • Data is far easier to compare
  • Data is quantifiable, can be traced 
  • Facts and figures can be accounted for, not up for dispute like QUAL data (likert scale etc)

• (J) Disadvantages of QUANT paper
  • Figures can be misleading
  • Stats don’t take into account how people change – people may lose/ gain interest, thus giving results that can be drastically different from estimates
  • Secondary data isn’t always reliable
  • Data need to be fact checked

————————————————————————————————-

• (M) Evaluate which method is more applicable to the hypothesis
  • In terms of raw numbers, Quant is more applicable and is able to more accurately compare exact figures between Esports/ regular sports
  • However – the insights that qual research can provide give a deeper understanding of the overall topic and would be far more important than raw stats to a games publisher for example
• (A) Potential room for improvement in this area of research
  • SCALE – scale up the sample sizes in QUAL research to gain more accurate detail
  • QUANT numbers of viewership

————————————————————————————————-

Reference List

Bryman, A., 2016. Social research methods. Oxford University Press.

Dane Bertram, 2007, Likert Scales… are the meaning of life:.

Gratton, C. and Jones, I., 2005. Research methods for sports studies. Taylor & Francis.

ResearchGate, 2018, Can Esports Unseat the Sports Industry? Some Preliminary Evidence from the United States. [Online] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329840491_Can_ESports_Unseat_the_Sports_Industry_Some_Preliminary_Evidence_from_the_United_States [Accessed 20 February 2020].

ResearchGate, 2017, What is eSports and why do people watch it? [Online] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306286205_What_is_eSports_and_why_do_people_watch_it [ Accessed 19thFebruary 2020].

SuperData, 2016, Esports, the 2016 report preview. [Online] Available at: https://www.superdataresearch.com/market-data/esports-market-report-2016/ [Accessed 20 February 2020].

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Personal Research

Why is it relevant?

Esports is an upcoming market (https://www.businessinsider.com/esports-ecosystem-market-report?r=US&IR=T) set to surpass $1.3bn in 2023 – impressive figures

Big companies like deloitte are tracking financial stats for esports nowadays – https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/advisory/articles/the-rise-of-esports-investments.html

Shows that Esports is getting to a point where it’s success and growth is relevant to people

Viewership figures posted freely (usually available on respective streaming sites)

Some regular sports have already been overtaken by Esports in terms of prize money

How to imrpove research –

Scale is important- larger sample sizes leads to increased accuracy over an entire population

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