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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

Esports institutionalization: The case of France

Résumé

Esports commonly refers to a competitive approach (professional and amateur) to video gaming that is organized in leagues, tournaments and championships (Hamari & Sjoblöm, 2017). Growing in popularity since the late 2010s due to the apparition of the streaming platforms (Rosell, 2017), esports is professionalizing and experiencing a structuration and institutionalization process at a national level in numerous country around the world including France. Many academic works have analyzed e-sports in comparison with sports, whether in the field of sports sciences (Mora & Héas, 2003; Reeves et al., 2009; Heere, 2014; Jenny et al., 2016; Holt, 2016; Van Hilvoorde & Pot, 2016; Heere, 2017; Holt, 2017; Holden et al., 2017; Karluhahti, 2017; Llorens, 2017; Besombes, 2017) or media and games studies (Wagner, 2006; Witkowski, 2012; Taylor, 2012; Hewitt, 2014). Yet these previous academic articles have mainly focused their analysis on the “physicality” of esports and few have focused on the role of institutionalization in this debate, except for Thiborg (2009), Jonasson & Thiborg (2010), Abanazir (2018). To understand this process, our fieldwork is based on a qualitative methodology. We have conducted semi-directive interviews with tournaments organizers and members of the recently created French regulatory body, France Esports. We also went to 10 French competitive events between 2015 and 2016 to observe the organization of the national esports competitions. Our results show that esports in France has historically been dispersed between players (communities and teams), promoters (associative and private leagues organizers) and games publishers who hold the intellectual property of the games. But since 2016, these three stakeholders have joined together to form the national association France Esports with a common goal: to structure and regulate the French esports ecosystem under the benevolence of the Ministry of Economy, of Labor and of Internal Affairs. The specificity of France is therefore both in the esports recognition by other public authorities than the sports one (Ministry or French National Olympic Committee), and the presence of the game publishers beside the players in the decision process of public policies for esports ecosystem. Since its creation, France Esports has been at the initiative of (i) the “digital republic law” which has brought competitive video gaming out of illegality and (ii) two decrees on the conditions of competitive events organization and the status of professional player.
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Dates et versions

hal-04015494 , version 1 (06-03-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04015494 , version 1

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Nicolas Besombes, Samuel Vansyngel, Arthur Velpry. Esports institutionalization: The case of France. Esports Conference (ESC), University of California in Irvine (UCI), Oct 2018, Los Angeles, United States. ⟨hal-04015494⟩
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