Managing Players and Performance: Stress & Coping Among Professional Esports Coaches – Leis (ERNC25) скачать в хорошем качестве

Managing Players and Performance: Stress & Coping Among Professional Esports Coaches – Leis (ERNC25)

This presentation by Oliver Leis from Leipzig University explores how professional and semi-professional esports coaches experience stress and how they cope within high-performance competitive environments. Esports coaches operate under intense pressure, sharing many of the same performance demands as players while simultaneously carrying responsibility for team outcomes, interpersonal dynamics, and organizational expectations. Despite this central role, coaches often lack structured development pathways or systematic support, making stress and burnout a growing concern within the industry. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with twelve male esports coaches working across national and international leagues, the study examines two key questions: the stressors coaches encounter in their roles and the strategies they use to manage these demands. Through reflective thematic analysis, stress was primarily constructed around performance expectations, complex player relationships, and organizational pressures. These stressors were frequently interconnected and extended beyond professional life, with several coaches describing exhaustion and burnout. Coping was framed as an ongoing, adaptive process rather than a fixed set of techniques. Coaches emphasized creating supportive team environments, managing emotional focus, and treating rest as both a personal and relational practice. Unlike players, coaches often understood stress through a lens of responsibility and long-term consequences, highlighting how identity, leadership, and sustained relational work shape their coping strategies. The findings align with broader sport psychology research while also underscoring unique features of esports coaching, particularly the lack of withdrawal options and the centrality of communication. The study points to the need for targeted coach education, organizational support structures, and future research that considers contextual and individual differences within esports coaching. Keywords: sport psychology, stress management, emotion, pressure, competitive gaming About the ERN Conference 2025: The Esports Research Network Conference 2025 took place online from November 12–14, 2025 as a continuous, 72-hour global livestream. Guided by the theme “Future Realities: Esports as a Global Lab,” the event explored how esports serves as a living laboratory for understanding digital transformation across education, media, technology, and society. This innovative digital-first format followed the sun across three regional hubs, Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania & Michigan State University (Americas), Staffordshire University (EMEA), and UNSW Sydney (Asia-Pacific), creating a nonstop, interconnected academic experience available to participants worldwide. This ambitious production was made possible through the support of Corsair for Business, whose Elgato technology powered high-quality broadcasting and seamless livestreaming across all three hubs. ERNC25 continues the network’s mission to unite scholars, practitioners, and students while fostering open, global collaboration in esports research. Full abstracts for all presentations can be viewed in the official Book of Abstracts at: https://book.esportsresearch.net Website: https://esportsresearch.net