Ryan Rogers is assistant professor of sports media and media production at Butler University.

• Chapter 1: What is Esports?Chapter 2: Can Video Games be a Sport? Debating and Complicating Esports as Physical CompetitionsChapter 3: The Origins of Esports: A Half-Century History of an "Overnight" SuccessChapter 4: Competition Formats in EsportsChapter 5: No Time for Lag: Newspaper Coverage of Esports, 2000-2018Chapter 6: Esport Spectator MotivationChapter 7: The Esports Consumer ExperienceChapter 8: The Motivations of Esports PlayersChapter 9: Fighting Games and Social PlayChapter 10: Sports Video Games (SVGs) in the Esports LandscapeChapter 11: Not Your Average Sunday Driver: The Formula 1 Esports Series World ChampionshipChapter 12: Counter-Strike or Counterpublic? Audience Creation, Transnational Discourses, and the Rhetorical Legitimation of Esports in TBS's ELEAGUEChapter 13: The Law of EsportsChapter 14: Leveraging Esports in Higher Education

Rogers (Butler Univ.) offers a practical volume to enable scholars and students of sports entertainment to gain an understanding of "esports" (electronic sports), a relatively new, billion-dollar, worldwide industry. Esports is here defined as "organized competitive gaming," a form of play as mediated by human-computer interfaces. Video games were mainly enjoyed by amateur players until the late 2000s, when a crescendo of interest in observing tournaments between professional players emerged. Professional games can now be watched by spectators through live streaming, and such activities currently represent a major sector of the video game industry. As explained by Rogers, this project took shape in 2018 as he was teaching a course on esports, and encountered difficulty with locating sufficient reading materials. The book was then quickly developed, with 14 chapters contributed by 30 authors, many of whom are experts in media and communications. . . the book provides a highly informative orientation to esports and its history, analyzing the roles of fans, players, and entrepreneurs, and identifying the principal games and genres.Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.