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The Sports Live Streaming Platforms (SLSPs) have taken centre stage in broadcasting sporting events. This study adopts the value creation sphere (VCS) model and the service dominant logic (SDL) to unpack the value co-creation process on SLSPs.

A case study with one of the most representative SLSPs in China, involving the netnographic approach and in-depth interviews, was conducted.

This study redefines the value co-creation spheres in the context of SLSPs and identifies four actors who contribute to viewers' value perceptions. The findings show that viewers' values can be co-created individually and collectively with other actors in both the customer sphere and the joint sphere.

This study extends the theoretical boundary of value co-creation into the context of SLSPs. The study findings help SLSPs managers and decision makers understand the value co-creation process to gain competitive advantages and enhance the sustainability of their services.

Despite the burgeoning popularity of virtual gifting in live streaming, research lacks an in-depth understanding of the drivers behind this behavior. Using para-social relationship (PSR), this study aims to capture viewers’ lively social feelings toward the streamer as the key factor leading to the purchase behavior of virtual gifts. It also aims to establish a theoretical link between PSR and viewers’ holistic experience in live streaming as captured by cognitive absorption and aims to investigates the role of technological features (i.e. viewer–streamer and viewer–viewer interactivity, streamer-level and viewer-level deep profiling and design aesthetics) in shaping viewers’ experience.

Based on 433 survey responses, this study employs a combination of structural equation modeling and neural networks to offer valuable insights into the relationships between the technological environment, viewer experience and viewer behavior.

Our results highlight the salience of PSR in promoting the purchase of virtual gifts through cognitive absorption and the importance of the technological environment in eliciting the viewer experience. This study sheds light on the development of PSR in a technological environment and its relationship with cognitive absorption.

By applying PSR to conceptualize viewers’ perceived connection with the streamer, this study extends the research on purchase behavior in the non-shopping context by providing an enlightened understanding of virtual gift purchase behavior in live streaming. Moreover, by theoretically linking PSR with cognitive absorption, virtual gift purchase and technological features of live streaming, it enriches the theory of PSR and bridges the gap between the design practice of supporting the IT infrastructure of live streaming and research.

This study aims to explore the determinants of viewers’ gifting and social sharing behaviours in online streaming from a dual-attachment perspective and to explain how live streaming fosters attachment through a social interaction aspect.

This study conducted an online survey with 316 valid responses to test the research model. The structural equation modelling approach was applied to assess both the measurement and structural models.

The results show that both bond-based and identity-based attachments promote gifting and social sharing behaviours. Participation and cognitive communion motivate viewers to establish bond-based attachment, while group interaction among viewer crowds encourages viewers to create identity-based attachment. In addition, group interaction can moderate the relationship between participation and bond-based attachment.

This study is one of the earliest attempts to highlight the significance of viewer crowd and viewer-viewer interaction in promoting viewers’ behaviours in live streaming context. This study also indicates that viewer-viewer interaction can moderate the impact of viewer–streamer interaction, which is among the first to investigate the interaction effects of viewer-viewer interaction and viewer–streamer interaction.

Although prior studies have studied the relationship between online consumers' attitudes and buying behaviour, the research focussing on online consumers' impulse buying behaviours and exploring the role of celebrity endorsement is limited. Drawing on the social presence and the social facilitation theory, this paper establishes a research model based on the stimuli–organism–response (S–O–R) model and the motivation theory. It explores how live streamers impact online consumers' impulse buying behaviours under specific social and cultural backgrounds, with celebrity endorsement as a moderating variable.

To test the research model, the online questionnaire method has been conducted in this study. This paper utilises Chinese online consumers as samples and promotes an online survey. Using the variance-based structural equation modelling and partial least squares path modelling (SEM-PLS), 433 valid questionnaires have been analysed on SmartPLS.

First, live streamers' attractive appearance positively correlates with online consumers' hedonic attitude and positively impacts their utilitarian attitude to live shopping. Second, live streamers' real-time interaction positively affects consumers' utilitarian attitudes because of their professional marketing and communication skills. Third, their hedonic and utilitarian attitudes positively influence online consumers' impulse buying behaviours. Finally, this paper presents that celebrity endorsement negatively moderates the relationship between online consumers' hedonic attitudes and impulse buying during live shopping.

This research combines the S–O–R model and the motivation theory and analyses related social influencing factors to study online consumers' impulse buying behaviours. Meanwhile, it explores the celebrity endorsement factor as a moderate role and identifies the different effects between live streamers and celebrities in live shopping, which is of great significance to the strategy of live shopping marketing and the literature on online consumers' behaviours.

This study aims to investigate how sports customers adopted over-the-top (OTT) services to consume sport content. Inspired by the technology acceptance model (TAM), the study aims to understand users' behavior when consuming sporting events and users' perceptions toward OTT services.

The participants of the study are Chinese sports consumers that use streaming services to watch live sport content. An online survey was distributed through HUPU Sports, a Chinese online communication community where sports fans can share opinions. To make sure all responses qualified to take part in the study, skip logic questions were added at the beginning of the questionnaire to ask participants to answer whether they used streaming services for watching sports. A total of 352 responses were received and there were 327 useable questionnaires.

The results revealed that viewing convenience, free of commercials and viewing quality were the main reasons impacting them to adopt OTT services. In terms of users' perceptions, paid users rated higher in perceived enjoyment, perceived value, perceived usefulness (PU) and ease of use than nonpaid users. OTT users' fandom and PU could predict the time the users spent on using these services, while the users' fandom and perceived value are positively related to the money users spent on these services. In addition, this study also found that users' fandom, perceived value, content quality, and ease of use are positively associated with users' intention to continue to use the service.

The study is one of the first attempts to explore how sports audiences adopted OTT services to consume sport content and explore the audiences' perceptions toward OTT usage. Previous studies have already investigated how users adopted music streaming services (Fernandes and Guerra, 2019) and other online streaming services (Shin and Park, 2021), but little attention has been given to sports streaming services specifically. Therefore, the findings of the study fill the gap in the extant knowledge of sport consumers' behavior and provide more insights to their online behaviors. Moreover, the authors also contribute to the growing digital media literature by advancing our understanding perceptional differences between paid users and unpaid users. The streaming services literature has primarily focused on general users (Fernandes and Guerra, 2019), but the services neglect to understand the differences in between paid and unpaid users.

Based on the “S-O-R” and attachment theories, this paper constructs a research model of the platform attribute factors of sports short video live e-commerce on consumers' psychological conditions, and explores how platform attributes affect consumer behavior through consumer attachment.

The study carried out questionnaire survey through the “snowball” method, and a total of 422 valid questionnaires were collected. The paper uses SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 26.0 to adapt the data and model, and adopts the method of structural equation modeling for analysis.

The research results show that the interactivity, identity, personalization and entertainment of live sports e-commerce platforms can actively stimulate consumer attachment, and directly drive their consumption behavior through their attachment.

Examining the platform attributes and system functions of short video live broadcast e-commerce from the perspective of consumer attachment can help sports e-commerce understand consumers' needs and satisfaction with the functions provided by the platform. Through timely optimization and improvement of system functions, the platform will make the connection between consumers and e-commerce closer, thereby increasing consumer stickiness and promoting the vigorous development of sports e-commerce.

This study identified and defined the platform attributes contained in the sports live broadcast e-commerce platform, combined the S-O-R model with the attachment theory, expanded the analytical framework of the S-O-R theory and made contributions to the extension of the attachment theory.

Recently, Jang and Byon (2020) found that esports recreational gameplay consumption is causally linked to esports online media consumption. In the context of esports, live-streaming content (by individual creators) is a new type of media consumption, which should be distinguished from esports event broadcast. Extending Jang and Byon’s finding, the purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effect of esports content live streaming in the relationship between esports recreational gameplay and esports event broadcast because it allows the games to be more accessible to viewers due to two-way communication. In order to test for stability of the mediating effect of esports live content streaming, we examined the hypothesized model across the three genres (i.e. imagination [n = 224], physical enactment [n = 195], sport simulation [n = 179]).

Data (N = 598) were collected via an online survey from individuals who had experienced esports recreational gameplay. A total of 15 items with five dimensions (i.e. esports recreational gameplay, esports content live streaming, esports event broadcast, streamer identification, and pro-player identification) were adapted from existing studies. The two identification constructs and gender were used as control variables.

The model fit of the measurement model was found to be acceptable via CFA. The results of SEM indicated that the intention of esports content live streaming consumption played a full mediation role in the relationship between esports recreational gameplay behavior and the intention of esports event broadcast consumption. Additionally, we found the mediating effect of esports content live streaming across the three genres.

This study contributes to literature related to the esports consumer behavior by conceptualizing esports content live streaming and found that esports content live streaming represents a mechanism that underlies the relationship between esports recreational gameplay intention and esports event broadcast consumption.

This study aimed to understand better what makes esports fans engage with streamers' live-streaming of esports gameplay. This study used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and additionally adopted streamer identification and esports game identification as moderating variables.

Data were collected from streamers' esports content streaming viewers over 18 years of age using an online survey in Amazon M-Turk (N = 307). Based on past esports live-streaming weekly watching hours, which range from 1 to 45 h, the participants were divided into lower (n = 152) and higher (n = 155) frequency groups. PLS-SEM and bootstrapping techniques were used to test the moderated mediation relationships among the constructs.

This study found a negative moderating effect of past watching experience on the relationship between attitudes and behavioral intention, and it positively moderated the path between perceived behavioral control and behavioral intention. Also, it was found statistically significant direct impacts of streamer identification (STI) and esports game identification (EGI) on attitude and subjective norms. While the indirect impact of STI on behavioral intention through attitude was statistically significant, there were no significant indirect impacts of EGI on attitude and behavioral intention through subjective norms.

Theoretically, this study extends the TPB model by exploring the two identifications (i.e. streamers and esports games) as antecedents of the focal TPB factors (i.e. attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control) and the moderating effect of prior experience based on high/low weekly watching frequencies. Practically, content creators of esports live-streaming and live-streaming platform managers can use the study’s findings to develop strategies to nurture their current and future viewership.

This study aimed to develop and validate an online live streaming perceived servicescape (OLSPS) scale that can help platform service providers to develop strategies for new live streaming channel promotions.

This study conceptualized the construct of OLSPS and the four-phase procedure of the 66-item OLSPS scale development, including item generation, item purification, scale validation, measure application and testing of hypotheses. It also provided a research framework to assess audiences' cognition and behavioral intention, and an online survey on 420 live streaming users (social platforms, n = 210; native platforms, n = 210) was conducted.

This study developed and validated a 35-item OLSPS scale with eight dimensions. The results of the empirical model showed that OLSPS is positively correlated with the audiences' cognition and behavioral intention. Furthermore, parasocial interaction experience showed a positive moderation on channel trust.

This study is a pioneering effort to develop and validate an OLSPS scale. The results could be helpful for researchers in building OLSPS and for managers in assessing and promoting users' acceptance of online live streaming platforms.

Esports is rapidly growing in popularity and viewership. The study's purpose was threefold: (1) to provide a systematic review and synthesis of esports spectatorship research. (2) to provide a reference for the psychology of consumer behavior in esports live streaming and esports event attendance. (3) to deliver a clear picture of the factors that impact consumer behavior in esports online and on-site consumption.

The study systematically reviews motivational aspects of online and on-site spectatorship using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA). SCOPUS and Google Scholar were selected as social science databases. Twenty-five papers met the inclusion criteria: (1) published between 2000 and 2022, (2) empirical investigation, (3) focus on online and/or on-site esports spectatorship/events. Five papers implemented randomization to assess common method bias.

Twenty-five papers qualified for subsequent analysis. The papers were mostly quantitative. They included a theoretical framework and investigated online esports spectatorship. Significant antecedents for motivation to watch esports online and/or on-site were fanship, tension release, entertainment, escaping everyday life and unique features like chat and direct communication. No consensus was found concerning similarities or differences between online and on-site esports spectatorship and traditional sports spectatorship.

This research contributed to a new theoretical, methodological and practical agenda. A more comparative approach analyzing contextual, structural and demographic cues could lead to a holistic picture of esports spectator motivation.