Exploring Esports Fandom on Social Media

With the emergence of esports, an increasing number of millennials and gen-Z are captivated by this burgeoning form of media content. Among the various esports tournaments, the League of Legends World Championship has gained unparalleled spectatorship since 2011, surpassing its counterparts in terms of viewership and securing its top-rank position globally until now. Furthermore, the peak viewership continuously soars steadily in the last two years. To understand the reasons behind its widespread popularity, this study investigates the social media usage of League of Legends esports spectators, and explores the following research question: How do the LoL World Championship spectators construct their digital fandom identity through social media usage? The study adopts a qualitative approach, employing the uses and gratifications theory as a theoretical framework to study the motivations underlying the spectatorship of the League of Legends World Championship and the utilisation of social media platforms. Additionally, this research utilises the digital fandom theory to analyse the digital fan identity within the esports context. In order to achieve this, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted to collect rich and nuanced data. The sample comprised 12 participants between the age of 20 and 27, representing diverse nationalities, including China, Finland, Netherlands, Poland, and South Africa. Participants were asked about their motivations and personal experiences with media consumption for League of Legends esports on various digital platforms. Existing research guided the development of the topic list, analysis and interpretation of the findings. The findings suggest that the spectators were active League of Legends gamers. Furthermore, the results confirm that all those media platforms have interwoven with fans’ socialisation opportunities to watch the LoL tournament and relate to their social media use for esports and game content. Moreover, knowledge acquisition emerges as the primary motivation driving spectators’ engagement with esports consumption and utilisation of digital media platforms. Additionally, the study reveals that although esports audiences share the same internal needs for media use, the different social-cultural backgrounds of interviewees from China and the West have resulted in different preferences for the functions of the media platforms. The findings of this study contribute to the current literature on digital fandom within the realm of esports. Specifically, this study confirms the significance of digital media interfaces for esports spectators, and suggests that future studies on the consuming motivation of esports spectatorship should take into account users’ overall digital media use as a whole and social-cultural influence.