ARC

The Arena Research Cluster (ARC) is a global community of researchers from across academia and industry who work with esports and sports analytics. ARC provides the following key services to the international esports community.

ARC facilitates knowledge exchange, collaboration and impact driven research. ARC is the vehicle through which researchers and professionals can connect, share resources and start new partnerships and collaborations.  

ARC defines innovation as introducing novel approaches, technologies, and means of knowledge generation that explore, enrich or otherwise advance understanding in or across the three interlinked pillars of esports (and sports) entertainment: competitive play, content production and audience experiences. 

With innovations from esports translating into traditional sports (and vice versa) ARC’s remit spans esports, physical sports and motorsports. 

ARC’s story

ARC was founded in 2019 by one of the world’s largest esports research teams at the University of York, UK. 

Recent years have seen a wealth of research that focuses on esports from a variety of disciplines including computer science, business, media studies, artificial intelligence, cultural studies, broadcasting, psychology, sociology and visualisation. There is however, no defined field of esports research. 

Through its community, ARC provides the starting point for defining esports as a domain of scientific inquiry.

ARC provides a range of services to the esports and sports community:

  1. Access to the latest research. Platform of knowledge exchange and dissemination through the ARC website and newsletter.
  2. Contact information. People and company directories.
  3. Knowledge exchange. Platform of knowledge exchange and dissemination, through the ARC website and newsletter. Integrated and browse-able research library.
  4. News dissemination. Quarterly research digest, providing an overview of the latest research in esports and white papers from the ARC community.
  5. Research highlights. Research spotlights and white papers.
  6. Collaborative events. Joint planning and execution of conferences and workshops.

For more information on ARC, please visit the website for the network here.