Considering the above mentioned challenges amongst the credibility and discrepancies between the esports stakeholders, this research objective is to develop a new model that can generate trusted, independent, and auditable data sources from consumers in this market segment. This objective will be achieved after performing a wide analysis of the esports scene in comparison to other entertainment industries that have already ironed their information quality, facilitating the understanding of potentials and business dynamics. Consumers statistics would be validated by the Esports Data Trust (EDT), an accessible system able to provide trusted data for partners and sponsors in a market momentum with a huge demand from private, public and third sector organizations in societies and institutions, from every country, to explore open data initiatives, (ODI, 2016). Advantages on open data initiatives has been widely studied by scholars for accurate measurements, as Tatem (2017) for population growth monitoring; studies as Wilson & Thereaux (2020) and Hardinges (2015) concluded that data trusts are new organisational structures providing independent stewardship of data, essential to increase access to information while retaining trust as part of a broader range of data institutions. The EDT advocates for this model in the esports industry, respecting the independence and privacy of the gamers to opt-out or benefit of the data sharing model. In the last decades, there was a global boom of policies for defining the regulations and legal responsibilities related to the usage and management of information, such as the General Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union (2018), and the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) in Switzerland (1993). The EDT will respect and promote such values in the structure, in which the rights to free competition, security, and privacy are essential. By doing so, the contribution of the model to the esports industry is scalable and applicable to other data ecosystems scenarios from industries or corporations in needs of increasing the information quality.
To achieve the general objective of stewarding trusted data in the esports market, I establish the following individual objectives (I.O):
I.O.1: Explore what we know of the esports market evolution and the use of consumers data for decision-making processes.
I.O.2: Develop a model of governance and technological framework that facilitate the data accessibility.
I.O.3: Explain the details of the models implementation and how it will contribute to provide transparency layers to the different stakeholders.
