A deep dive into esports research

  The Emotional Labour of Esports Coaching: A Qualitative Discourse Analysis of Publicly Available Media Abstract Esports coaching has emerged as a distinct occupational role characterised by high performance expectations, constant public visibility, and intensive interpersonal work with young athletes. While a small but growing body of survey- and interview-based research has begun to document stressors and burnout among esports coaches, far less is known about how the emotional demands of the role are represented outside of the research interview  that is, in the everyday public discourse through which coaches, players, and organisations narrate the job to audiences. This paper develops a nine-category coding framework for the emotional labour of esports coaching  stress, pressure, emotional regulation, conflict, responsibility, failure, burnout, player welfare, and public criticism  grounded in Hochschild's (1983) theory of emotional labour and its extension...

 Abstract This paper examines the structural transition of competitive Overwatch from the Overwatch League (OWL) a closed, franchised, and heavily centralized professional league to the Overwatch Champions Series (OWCS), an open, qualifier-based competitive circuit introduced in 2024. Drawing on esports management literature and organisational theory, the paper develops a non-linear model of esports professionalisation, arguing that ecosystems can move not only from amateur to professional status but also through phases of hyper-professionalisation, retrenchment, and reconfiguration. The paper traces the franchised commercial model that defined OWL, the structural and economic pressures that made this model unsustainable, and the design logic of OWCS as an open-access, third-party-operated alternative. It concludes that OWCS should not be read simply as a downgrade or failure state but as a distinct organisational form one that redistributes risk away from centralised ownership and...