National Esports Associations

Though esports is largely constructed around commercial stakeholders that currently play an international dominant role within it (especially publishers), it has simultaneously always been a local grassroots driven activity deeply tied to third party organisations and regional communities of players. Therefore, national esports associations are historically involved in the organization of commercially decentralized esports practices.

Since the early 2000s, the number of such national associations has only increased in all geographical areas of the world. Although the significance of the role of these non-profit esports associations, (particularly in their relationships with publishers on the one hand, and with public authorities and governments on the other), deserves to be questioned (both on a case-by-case basis and in a systemic way), their creation/existence underlines the willingness of some actors to unify, federate and represent the diversity of their own local ecosystem.

These national associations are also characterized by their own diversity of models, structures, governance and missions:

• Some are recognised by their public authorities and governments (whether by the Ministries of Sport, Education, Culture or Economics), others are not;
• Some are representative of all stakeholders in the esports ecosystem (France Esports for example: players, teams, competition organisers and publishers), others of only one or two stakeholders groups (such as British Esports Association);
• Some organise national and local championships (e.g. Mind Sports South Africa), others do not (e.g. Esport Bund Deutschland);
• Some are members of the International eSports Federation (or another international association), others do not necessarily seek it (e.g. Asociación Española de Videojuegos);
• Some want to have the sport recognized by traditional sport governance bodies, others do not;
• Some are democratic (regular bureau elections and transparency), others have chosen a different model;
• Some are very old (e.g. Korean Esports Association), others are newly created (e.g. United States Esports Federation);
• Some have a very large number of members (e.g. Sweden Esports Federation), others only a few (e.g. Federaçao Portuguesa Do
  Desporto Electronico);
• Some countries contain only one national association (South Korea), others have succeeded in unifying the many contestant national associations (e.g. Japan or Mexico), and others see many associations trying to work in parallel (Argentina, Australia, Italy or Philippines for example).

One of the common points of these associations is to seek to bridge the gap between local esport actors (from players, to teams and leagues organizers) and their national public authorities, in order to make sure that governments aknowledge esports on their territory, propose public policies and support the activity:

• Promote the deployment of a clear path of leisure to the high-level and the professional by structuring the amateur ecosystem;
• Unblock public subsidies for grassroots clubs and organizers;
• Develop training courses for trainers (staffs, coaches, managers, etc.);
• Facilitate the issuance of international visas;
• Encourage the hosting of major esports international events;
• Recognize the professional player statute to create school time arrangements for high-level players pursuing their studies;
• Etc.

However, their legitimacy is not always acquired. And despite a shared desire to promote a responsible and sustainable esports, the work to be done is still long to convince governments of the need to engage with esports on one hand, and publishers of the added-value that can bring their actions on the other hand (whose publishers have neither the time nor the funds nor the human resources to take care of).