A Review of the Psychological Mechanisms Linking Audience Engagement and Sponsor Brand Interaction in Esports

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_104How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Esports; Audience Engagement; Audience Psychology; Sponsor Brand Engagement; Psychological Mechanisms

Abstract

In the current era, due to the electric industry’s growth, esports are booming. With the development of esports, it has attracted more audiences and investors, which also represents its increasingly obvious economic benefits. In this context, this study combines academic achievements in audience participation, audience psychology, and sponsor brand involvement in the context of electronic sports events. In order to investigate the personal emotional impact of esports on audiences and their perception of sponsor brands, an analysis was conducted by combining the framework and results of previous papers. Overall, it has been found that electronic sports have an interactive effect on audience emotions. The audience of electronic sports has important key impacts on brand awareness through cognition, emotion, and behavior. This article will broaden the perspective of participation and observe and summarize from multiple dimensions. But based on previous literature research, most studies’ analyses are based on questionnaire surveys and cross-sectional survey designs, which retain significant subjectivity and may limit causal inference, ultimately affecting research results. For example, there may be a reverse effect of brand attitude on engagement, with reverse causality. Considering the limitations, the advice given to participants is to consider building deeper emotional connections. For esports officials, it is recommended to consider immersive scene design and enhanced engagement design. For sponsors, brand exposure should shift towards deeper emotional resonance and community integration.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zimeng Wang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/23
TI  - A Review of the Psychological Mechanisms Linking Audience Engagement and Sponsor Brand Interaction in Esports
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 2nd International Conference on Financial Innovation and Marketing Management (FIMM 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 999
EP  - 1008
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_104
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-801-6_104
ID  - Wang2026
ER  -