*CFP* "ESPORTS: PLAYING ON AND OFF THE SCREEN", 4TH ISSUE, THE ERACLE JOURNAL

Electronic sports, or eSports, is the activity of playing videogames competitively. Strategic videogames such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Fortnite, Starcraft, Defence of the Ancients, Arena of Valor, are played globally by millions of players. Even if the sports genre has historically been one of the most present in the world of videogames, since early experiments such as "Tennis for two", most videogames played on eSports tournaments create entirely new environments and set of rules that require prolonged sessions of play to be mastered. Players who attempt a career in eSports typically gather in teams, occasionally supported by external sponsorship, and engage in intensive and prolonged training sessions (Brock 2017; Kari and Karhulahti 2016). Professionally competing in eSports should be treated as a form of precarious labour, and investigated through the social and economic barriers that shape its communities and material conditions of possibility (Taylor 2012). At the same time, eSports generate large investments and new technical solutions. 

For example, platforms such as Twitch have largely invested in the online streaming of eSports (Taylor 2018; Gandolfi 2016; Woodcock and Johnson 2019). Gambling in eSports is a rapidly growing business, projected to generate revenues of $1.5 billion by 2020, with obvious implications on the professionalisation of play in digital environments (Sweeney, Tuttle and Berg 2019). The League of Legends finals in 2019, had over 300,000 spectators connected live, and generated over $2.2 million in cash prize for the winners. eSports finals have been played in live stadia and arenas where traditional sports are usually played, but are also broadcasted on streaming platforms, thus blurring the boundaries between physical and digital environments (Miah 2020). eSports players engage with complex interfaces and in entirely unmapped territory of professionalism while doing real work in virtual environments (Scholz 2020).

The recent pandemic crisis has hampered the organization of live sports events. However, sports-themed broadcasters have used this occasion to offer eSports performances to their audiences. For example, football tournaments have been co-organised by FIFA and Electronic Arts during the lockdown (Electronic Arts 2020), and the Indycar tournament season has been concluded migrating the competition to the online videogame iRacing (Zacny 2020). The positive audience response was partly helped by the participation of "real" sports stars taking part in the video game simulations of their sports discipline. With this issue we want to investigate the potential impact of eSports for traditional broadcasting economies. eSports are a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, involving global audiences, digital platforms, transmedia broadcasting, new forms of labour, virtual economic transactions, and forms of (self-)exploitation that often involve young people. For these reasons, it requires a critical investigation from the fields of the social sciences.

We invite proposals that critically investigate eSports from a variety of perspectives, including:

• Integration of eSports and traditional sports;
• Audience development, television and eSports;
• Training: Train eSports and eSports as training;
• eSports and sports simulation;
• eSports as a job and professional models;
• Economics and labor protection in the eSports horizon;
• eSports as forms of entertainment;
• eSports and new cheering models;
• eSports and the universe of betting: betting on eSports and betting on simulations.

Closing date for abstracts submission: 15th December 2020

Notification to the authors: 30th December 2020

Articles delivery deadline: 31th March 2021

Articles assessment: 30th April 2021

Final review: 30th June 2021

Publication: September 2021

Articles can be written in Italian, English, Spanish or French and must be sent to the editors and to the journal using the following email addresses:

eraclejournal@gmail.com

emiliano.chirchiano@unina.it

vdelgaudio@unisa.it

p.ruffino@liverpool.ac.uk