Esports and science: Tuning into the phenomenon of electronic sports

Abstract

The cultural changes suffered in the last decades have originated different emergent phenomena that have burst into our time. Electronic sports (esports) have been consolidated as one of them, giving rise to their study from multiple areas, especially from the sciences of physical-sports activity (leisure, performance, professionalization …). Therefore, this work illustrates how the scientific-academic world is currently addressing this phenomenon, using the PRISMA-P protocol for systematic reviews and the databases Scopus and Web of Science as main sources of information. The results provide a total of 106 works on the subject, which have been categorized into four thematic axes: physical activity and health; concept of sport; esports as a social phenomenon; and marketing and legal framework. As a main result, there is a scarce corpus of scientific-academic knowledge about esports, in comparison with its social impact. The dispersion in the topics from which it is approached is due, fundamentally, to the almost non-existent legal regulatory framework, besides the abstract of the phenomenon to explain it from the traditional concept of sport.