Home Advantage: Ceremonial Soft Power in the New Arena of E-sports
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2025-06-13
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en
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This thesis investigates how opening ceremonies of sporting mega-events and e-sports events,
as tool of cultural diplomacy, contribute to enhancing the host country’s soft power. Where
existing literature has put considerable focus on traditional sporting mega-events, such as the
Olympics and FIFA World Cup, this thesis offers a contemporary lens by adding e-sports as
platform for symbolic projection in a digital age. Through a comparative case study analysis,
an analytical framework is developed to compare four dimensions: Intended Audience &
Style, National Narrative & Story, Symbols & Iconography, and Technology. With the
analysis and comparison of the Sochi 2014 Olympics, the Games of the Future 2024 in
Kazan, and the Olympic E-sports Week 2023 in Singapore, the analysis examines how the
opening ceremonies are utilized as soft power tool, focusing on similarities and differences
between sporting mega-events and e-sports events. Findings reveal how e-sports events offer
a considerable focus on technological development - not as part of, but as the narrative.
Accordingly, the concept of techno-symbolic soft power is introduced to define this
phenomenon. The study advances scholarly understanding of ceremonial soft power as
cultural diplomacy tool and contributes a novel understanding of e-sports as an emerging
domain of cultural influence.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen