Reshaping Esports Fandom: Insights into Platformization from B.stage and LCK Communities

This study examines how B.stage, a centralized global fandom platform launched by HYBE and Naver, reshapes esports fan engagement through its integration with four League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) teams: T1, Dplus KIA, Gen.G, and KT Rolster, along with the U.S.-based organization Sentinels. Its central argument is that the shift from decentralized, open platforms such as Reddit, Discord, YouTube, and Twitch toward closed, membership-based ecosystems represents a fundamental change in esports fandom, consolidating streaming, communication, and monetization into a single space that supports community identity formation and direct player interaction. The authors frame this against a backdrop of rapid esports growth, with global viewership projected to rise from 435.7 million in 2020 to 640.8 million in 2025, and against a literature that increasingly calls for more nuanced accounts of fan diversity by genre, geography, gender, and platform.

The research is based on a three-month digital ethnography of esports fan communities on B.stage, which is part of a broader longitudinal project. It pursues two objectives: a comparative analysis of the four LCK team communities, and an examination of how platform affordances and team-specific strategies shape fan engagement practices. The study draws on prior work showing that B.stage, which reported roughly 3 million monthly active users across 230 countries by August 2024, has substantial engagement in the United States, South Korea, Japan, France, and Brazil. Its membership model, which offers exclusive content and monetization opportunities, is presented as a driver of both community cohesion and commercial value.

Beyond its empirical focus, the paper positions itself as a contribution to scholarship on digital games' cultural significance and to practical discussions of how esports teams can build long-term sustainability.