Esports and the Play–Game–Sport Continuum: Updating the Model

Esports is an emerging topic of study and interest both to the academy and the wider world given the rapid growth in both interest and funding of Esports competitions and teams that observed over the past few years. There are many definitional approaches proposed for Esports; however, these tend to be essentialistic and do not properly account for the differences between Esports and traditional sport nor how Esports participants engage with and interact with Esports and their degree of interaction. This paper examines categories of Esports engagement and introduces an updated and reimagined version of the play–games–sport continuum using play, leisure, and work as nonbinary or nonopposed factors. This updated play – leisure – work model expands the X -axis to include five foundations divided into two categories: actions/entities (consisting of games and sport) and attitudes/states (consisting of play, leisure, and work). In doing so, the new play – leisure – work model bypasses the strictures of a stipulated and essentialistic definitional approach to sport and assists in the understanding of how those who participate in Esports do so from a nonessentialistic point of view.