eSports Personas: Segmentation and Fan Group Analysis of eSports Fans

This thesis project is designed to provide brands and prospective sponsors with information about the habits and tendencies of different segments of eSports fans in order to better assist them in making decisions regarding sponsorship deals and sponsorship activation. This thesis has been based off of “The World of Games: eSports” and “the eSports Playbook” studies conducted in 2017 by Goldman Sachs and Nielsen respectively. The goals of these studies were to:

1) provide a clear and coherent picture of different eSports demographics
2) understand the consumption habits and psychological tendencies of these groups
3) use data to create marketing strategies tailor made to each cluster group.

These studies were used as a basis to create personas encompassing the traditional sports affiliations eSports users have, as well as their attitudes towards different types of advertisements.

The goal of this project is to create marketing strategies for different types of brands tailormade to specific groups of eSports fans based on their traditional sports fandom. By testing the fandom overlap of the most popular traditional sports with the most popular eSports games, useful connections that tie both fandoms together can be made for brands. Certain endemic and non-endemic brands can use this data to help decide which industry is a better fit financially and demographically. Other brands will be able to use this data to create strong marketing campaigns that span both eSports and traditional sports leagues, delivering a clear and succinct message across multiple platforms.