Esports: Explaining Willingness to Pay for Streaming Services

Online multiplayer computer game competitions—so-called esports—attract millions of spectators around the world and show spectator numbers comparable to Super Bowl. Despite that, publishers, which often organize these large-scale competitions, still struggle establish esports as a profitable business venture. One way they can do so involves how position fee-based streaming services for watching online. To draw their services, organizers need focus on attracting with high willingness pay (WTP), satisfy spectators’ motivations. Grounded in uses gratifications theory fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, our results that four different configurations motivations relate WTP services. We contribute by showing 1) form context, 2) multiple interacting explain WTP, 3) follow rationales WTP.