e-Sport as Leverage for Growth Strategy: The Example of League of Legends

While e-Sport today becomes a big business and a highly publicized industry, a big business and a highlypublicized industry, it is still studied from a descriptive perspective rather than from an analytical one. In this paper, the author proposes to analyze the relationship between e-Sport and the growth strategy of the game League of Legends (LoL) developed by Riot Games. How competitive community and casual community evolve together? What are the conditions for a virtuous growth? The author deepens the link between the traditional free-to-play dynamics based on acquisition-retention-monetization of players and the dynamics of e-Sport based on managing audience, pro-gamers, competitive events and broadcasting. The author finds that casual players and pro-gamers have specific roles that, combined with an active policy centered on player’s experience developed by Riot Games and with a growing media ecosystem, create externalities on each other.