Esports with academic and managerial perspective

From the beginning of 1980's, video games and gaming consoles have grown popularity with advancing new technologies. This attention towards video games has led to improvement of video game industry and emerged "E-sports" concept. Not just growing numbers of viewers, participants and also investments of various companies, sports clubs have blazed up the discussion whether E-sports is a real sports or not. The purpose of this study is assessing E-sports from different perspectives of academics who are studying e-sports and business managers in the industry itself. The research was designed according to the phenomenological design of qualitative research designs and semi-structured interview approach was used as data collection method. Despite of E-sports being a new field, it's evolution has gained such a momentum that it surpassed many conventional sports fields. Thanks to technological advancements and global spread of internet usage; federations and leagues have been established and E-sports has become a professional and an international industry. Findings of this study have proved that E-sports can meet most of the requirements of being a sports and it's future in sports field looks promising. However; due to being a new concept, foundation of E-sports is unsettled and has a need of fulfillment towards it's shortcomings.