The cultural politics of esports

Anne Tjønndal and Eivind Å. Skille

Chapter 26 in Handbook on Sport and Culture, 2025, pp 398-413 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter analyses esports in comparison with mainstream sports and within the framework of cultural politics (integrating meaning-making and power negotiations). Based on a classic definition of sport, esports are contested due to the lack of physical activity and the less developed institutionalisation. The governance of esports is characterised by multiple organisations and consequently a lack of a unified or coordinating international umbrella organisation. These organisations have to varying degrees considered integrity policies regarding doping and match-fixing. The event management of esports reflects the governance as hard to get an oversight. Through empirical examples, the chapter demonstrates how the organisation of esports and the management of esports events is a messy field which currently serves to reinforce esports as a contested terrain for mainstream sport organisations and policymakers. However, when it comes to participation, esports resemble classic sport patterns regarding sociological dimensions such as gender, class, and race/ethnicity.

Keywords: Culture; Politics; Governance; Events; Participation; Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035339976
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035339983.00044 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23613_33

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().