Country performance in e-sport: Social and economic development determinants

The article examines the cases of 18 countries that have been consistently ranked by Esports Earnings over the past ten years to find the social and economic determinants that may determine a country’s success in the international e-sports arena. In the study, indicators of a country’s cybersports success consider the annual volume of prizes won by its e-sportsmen, the ranking place in the world rankings and the total number of e-sportsmen. The hypothesis about the possible influence of a number of macroeconomic indicators, as well as the characteristics of the overall level of social stability on the development of e-sports within the country, was put forward and verified. The scientific landscape of research on cybersports, published in Scopus (by prevailing research topics, the geography of research network leaders, and the evolution of scientific search), was structured using the VOSviewer toolkit. By means of canonical analysis, pairwise relationships in the chain “economic development – social development – e-sports development,” as well as determinants with strong intragroup and intergroup relationships, have been revealed; and these relationships were quantified in the aggregate by means of structural modeling. The results of the calculations showed that the economic stability of the country rather than social stability has a greater influence on its success in the international e-sports arena. The most relevant indicators of economic development, considering success in e-sports, are GDP, unemployment rate and direct foreign investments, social development – poverty rate, population migration and Gini coefficient.