Esports are...

• "an abbreviation of 'electronic sports'"Rea, S. C. 2016. “Crafting Stars: South Korean E-Sports and the Emergence of a Digital Gaming Culture.” Education About Asia: Online Archives 21(2):22.
• “competitive electronic video gaming”Papadakis, Zacharias, and Kendrick Morris. 2024. “Collegiate Esports: To Be or Not to Be a Collegiate Sport.” Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports 2(1). doi:https://doi.org/10.1123/jege.2023-0045.
• “professional organized video game competitions”Hindin, Jacob, Matthew Hawzen, Hanhan Xue, Haozhou Pu, and Joshua Newman. 2020. “E-Sports.” In Routledge Handbook of Global Sport, edited by John Nauright and Sarah Zipp, 405. London: Routledge.
• “the competitive and sometimes professional play of digital games to audiences for prizes”Williams, J. Patrick, Mark R. Johnson, and Vinay Kumar. 2025. “‘A Little Bit Like Psychological Torture’: A Grounded Theory of the Sociocultural Challenges Surrounding Expertise Development in an Emerging Esports Ecosystem.” Games and Culture. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120251319176.
• “the competitive play of video games, typically conducted via leagues and tournaments”Macey, Joseph, Topias Mattinen, and Juho Hamari. 2025. “Paying, Playing, and Spectating: Relationships Between Digital Game Play and Spectating Esports.” Games and Culture. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120251376073.
• “electronically mediated sport and the leagues in which players compete through networked games and related activities”Jin, Dal Yong. 2021. “Introduction: Esports.” In Global Esports: Transformation of Cultural Perceptions of Competitive Gaming, edited by Dal Yong Jin. Bloomsbury Academic.
• “productive game labor”Fickle, Tara. 2021. “Made in China: Gold Farming as Alternative History of Esports.” ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories 3(1). https://www.romchip.org/index.php/romchip-journal/article/view/132.
• “a catchall term for games that resemble conventional sports insofar as they have superstars, playoffs, fans, uniforms, comebacks and upsets”CITATION

There are significant disagreements on what constitutes esports, who is understood to participate in esports, and what activities count as “doing” esports. However, several recurring themes tie the above definitions together - click on each to explore further:

• Video Games
• Competitive & Professional Play
• Organized Leagues & Tournaments
• Audiences & Prizes
• Relationship to Traditional Sports