Editorial: What is esports performance?

The rapid growth of esports underscores its increasing need to be taken seriously by
commerce, nations and sports organisations. Born from and rooted in the digital age,
esports furthermore manifests ideas and ways of being engaged and performing that
generate a wealth of novel questions for research and academic discussion. Esports has
thus unsurprisingly emerged as a rich subject of academic inquiry, with researchers
exploring whether esports is suitably physical to be considered sport, whether
esports could become an Olympic discipline, but also esports specific issues relating
to health, gender, spectatorship, economics, matters of governance, management and institutionalization, as well as different ethical issues rapidly emerging within and around esports. Researchers have moreover taken an active interest in esports as novel kinds of bodily practices, with esports performances serving as potentially illuminating cases for broader discussions within cognitive science on the relationship between cognition, embodiment and other virtual technologies. With this research topic, held together by original and methodologically diverse contributions from fifteen authors, the aim is to add further nuance to the phenomenon of esports performances.