Sleep Behaviour and Subjective Sleep Quality in Esports Athletes: A Multilevel Analysis of Night-to-Night Variability

BACKGROUND: Esports training is typically self-directed and frequently scheduled late in the day, which may disrupt habitual sleep-wake patterns and contribute to poor sleep outcomes. Although previous esports research has identified delayed sleep timing and reduced sleep duration at the group level, less is known about how night-to-night fluctuations in sleep behaviour and stable individual characteristics jointly influence perceived sleep quality. Examining both intra-individual and inter-individual determinants may provide a more nuanced understanding of sleep health in esports athletes. METHODS: Twenty-four esports athletes (male: n = 16, age M = 20.13 ± 2.42 years; female: n = 8, age M = 25.13 ± 4.02 years; range 18-33) from Brisbane, Australia, completed the study between October 2023 and March 2024. The protocol comprised baseline questionnaires assessing sleep hygiene, habitual sleep quality, chronotype, and daytime sleepiness, followed by approximately seven consecutive nights of wrist-worn actigraphy and daily sleep diaries (187 valid nights). Subjective sleep quality was rated each morning on a 5-point scale. Multilevel modelling was used to examine within-person associations between nightly deviations in sleep duration and bed/wake times, as well as the timing of esports gameplay relative to bedtime (no gameplay, < 1 h, 1-2 h, > 2 h). Between-person predictors included sleep hygiene, habitual sleep timing and duration, and age. RESULTS: Participants averaged approximately 6 h 42 min (± 51 min) of sleep per night and reported moderate subjective sleep quality. The intraclass correlation coefficient indicated that 20% of the variance in sleep quality was attributable to between-person differences, with the remaining 80% reflecting within-person variability. At the nightly level, longer-than-average sleep duration was associated with higher perceived sleep quality, whereas nightly bed and wake times were not significant predictors. Nights in which gameplay ended 1-2 h before bedtime were associated with poorer sleep quality compared with nights without gameplay. At the between-person level, poorer sleep hygiene was associated with lower sleep quality, whereas later habitual bedtimes were associated with higher sleep quality ratings across the monitoring period. CONCLUSIONS: Subjective sleep quality in esports athletes is shaped by both nightly variability in sleep duration and stable behavioural characteristics. These findings highlight the importance of sleep regularity, behavioural routines, and training schedules in esports, and support the use of multilevel approaches to capture dynamic sleep processes in performance-based gaming contexts.