This study investigates the roles and responsibilities of eSports stakeholders in ensuring eSports players’ health and wellbeing through the following research questions: (1) What are the roles and...

This paper investigates high-performance athletes’ development of their financial literacy and self-management skills and the related organisational support available to them during their athletic careers. The data were collected from 20 retired high-performance athletes (10 male and 10 female) representing six different countries (Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, and the UK). Thematic analysis was applied to the processing of the data and five themes emerged: (1) Funding battles: financial challenges and misjudgements; (2) Coping Strategies; (3) Support from sponsors, parents, and sport organisations; (4) Development of Financial Literacy; and (5) Life After Sport. The data indicates that athletes experienced financial challenges due to a lack of organisational support, reduced or terminated funding, and limited opportunities to access sponsorship. Typically, athletes developed their financial literacy and self-management skills by ‘self-help’ or ‘trial and error’. The findings contribute to both literature and practice by providing empirical evidence on the coping strategies adopted by athletes in order to overcome financial challenges and on the methods used in order to develop their financial literacy and self-management skills. These findings inform sport organisations and governing bodies to develop support schemes for high-performance athletes as well as deepen our knowledge of athletes’ career development and transitions focusing on the financial aspect.

Research question: This paper is an integration of three studies. Study 1 investigates sport career transition organisational intervention programmes for high-performance athletes and training and development programmes for sport career transition practitioners in order to find a research gap with regard to sport career transition supporting services. A psycho-educational curriculum was developed for sport career transition practitioner in Study 2 to fill the research gap. In Study 3, the curriculum was examined to see if the curriculum contributed to enhancing practitioners’ confidence in key competences. Research methods: A range of methods were applied to the studies including One Group Pre- and Post-test design, Case Study, Focus Group, Semi-Structured Interview, two-round Delphi-Method, and Questionnaires. The data for Study 1 collected from 19 countries worldwide and total 16 participants based in seven different countries were invited to development and evaluation of the curriculum. Results and Findings: A novel psycho-educational curriculum for sport career transition practitioner was developed and evaluated concerning four competences as a form of curriculum package. The findings revealed that the curriculum package increased the participants’ confidence in key competences concerning sport career transition. Implications: The findings deepen the knowledge of sport career transition in the areas of organisational intervention programmes focusing on high-performance athletes and sport career transition practitioners. These findings contribute to modifying the Conceptual Model of Adaptation to Career Transition [Lavallee, D., Park, S., & Taylor, J. (2014). Career transition among athletes: Is there life after sports? In J. Williams & V. Krane (Eds.), Applied sport psychology: Personal growth to peak performance (pp. 490–509). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill] by strengthening the organisational intervention perspective and applied work in respect of sporting organisation management strategies.

This study investigates existing support services/systems that support junior dual career athletes in seven different countries. Specifically, the study aimed to identify: (1) What support services/systems are available for junior dual career athletes in the seven countries? and (2) Are there any similarities or differences between the seven countries? Between March 2020 and June 2020, desk-based data collection was conducted to identify any relevant evidence to answer the two research questions. Research teams from seven countries collected data from websites of sports organisations, sports clubs and schools to identify any structured support services/systems used to help junior athletes manage their dual careers. A deductive approach was applied to analyse the data. The seven countries identified between 10 and 36 organisational support services/systems which support junior athletes manage their dual career. Many of the sports organisations across the countries provided financial support via a small grant to cover equipment costs, travel expenses, and sport science and medicine support (e.g. physio and sport psychology support). Results indicated holistic support for junior athletes is lacking at the secondary school level. This study has both academic and practical implications. The findings extend the knowledge of organisational support for junior athletes aged between 15 and 19 years old and addresses a clear gap in both literature and practice. This study contributes to raising awareness of the need for customised support systems for junior dual career athletes and informs relevant authorised bodies of the need to develop evidence-based support schemes.

This article aims to understand the relationship between basic needs satisfaction, self-determined motivation, and burnout in esports players. To achieve this, we investigate three research hypotheses: (1) The three dimensions of basic needs satisfaction have a positive effect on the self-determined motivation of esports players, (2) The self-determined motivation of esports players has a negative effect on their burnout, and (3) All three dimensions of basic needs satisfaction affect esports player’s burnout, indirectly via self-determined motivation. Data were collected through an online questionnaire (n = 608) administered to Korean esports players who play online games as a leisure activity. Results indicate that player competence has a negative relationship with self-determined motivation, suggesting that Korean players do not associate increased levels of competence with their intrinsic motivation. The results show that intrinsic motivation is negatively associated with burnout, particularly exhaustion and reduced sense of accomplishment. It should be noted that Korean players’ high level of competence can result in reduced levels of self-determined motivation, which can lead them to burnout. This should be addressed by the industry, practitioners, and researchers considering the cultural context and the relationship between the factors, which will contribute to the sustainable growth and prosperity of the esports.