Main Issues of Economic Sustainability and Financial Responsibility in the Ecosystem of Esports

This magister thesis contains observations of phenomenon of esports, as well as of its’ global market and ecosystem regarding main issues with economic sustainability of esports organizations, who are the main actors of the ecosystem. Also the question of financial responsibility of management is being raised in this paper. The latter matter is important since esports organizations struggle with inflated costs on professional players’ salaries, which happened as a result of wrong goals and decisions of esports management in the past. That problem combined with problem of heavily sponsor-favored global market of esports revenue streams leads to esports organizations feeling the pressure applied by threats of losing stable footing with losing sponsors. Hence, organizations tend to seek for financials in sector and industries that may be perceived by society as less ethical – gambling industries. While bookmakers are considered to be more standardized sponsors for the industry, other entities that offer unregulated gambling activities are not welcomed by esports community at all. That leads to growing negativity and pressure on the esports organizations to abandon gambling sponsors completely, which will result in more economic problems since gambling is one of the more proved and stable sponsors. That raises concern on what will be an effect on economic sustainability of esports organizations and how lack of financial responsibility on management in esports will influence the future of the industry. Those concern will eventually be addressed with more studies and improvements. Key words: esports, economic sustainability, stakeholders, corporate social responsibility, CSR, sustainable development, ESG, profitability, ethical issues of sponsors, bookmakers, gambling.