Managing phygital experiences in grassroots esports: human-centered orchestration in the Swedish LAN-scape

Competitive video gaming (esports) is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon (Hamari and Sjöblom, 2017) that originated with physical Local Area Network (LAN) parties and subsequently developed into a digital context (Scholz, 2019). Society increasingly operates in blurred spaces where citizens and consumers move seamlessly between digital and physical realms (Šimůnková, 2019), engaging across multiple touchpoints that generate emotions (Mele et al., 2021) and unique experiences (Banik and Gao, 2023). During competitive tournaments, audiences span both physical venues and online platforms, with thousands in arenas and millions more streaming globally. This creates unprecedented challenges for service providers who simultaneously manage performer, audience, and digital viewer experiences (Baudet and Parmentier, 2025). Thus, esports represent an opportunity to extend knowledge on the intersection of the digital and physical (Cranmer et al., 2021), conceptualized as phygital (Batat, 2022).

Conceptually, esports can be framed as a servicescape (Bitner, 1992) in which environmental design, social atmospherics, and technological infrastructure interact to shape audience responses. Kunz et al. (2021) extended this notion by introducing the esports servicescape, a hybrid physical–digital service environment where actors co-create value as part of the service-dominant logic paradigm (Vargo and Lusch, 2016). While this theoretical lens provides a valuable foundation, empirical applications remain scarce. Existing studies often examine isolated factors such as atmosphere (Jang et al., 2021) or service quality (Cerqueira et al., 2025), rather than integrating them within a holistic framework. While esports face ongoing issues of sustainability across both social and economic dimensions (Nyström et al., 2022), they represent an influential aspect of modern media (Scholz, 2020), with limited attention paid to management aspects (Flegr and Schmidt, 2022). Sustainability challenges are particularly evident at the grassroots level, where volunteer organizers must balance community building with resource constraints while fostering inclusive environments that transcend individual events (McCauley et al., 2023). Exploring esports as servicescapes can deepen our understanding of the dynamic interplay between technological advancement, audience engagement, and value co-creation across both digital and physical (phygital) spaces (McCauley et al., 2025).

Phygital service research (PSR) refers to the study of how organizations design and manage seamless, human-centered experiences that integrate physical and digital environments guided by experiential pillars such as sociability, immersivity, and affectivity (Batat, 2022). It introduces a new paradigm that views service experiences and value creation as fluid, collectively shaped, and influenced by ethical considerations and technological mediation within specific contexts (Batat, 2025). It also highlights the shortcomings of existing frameworks in addressing the complexities of hybrid physical–digital environments. Thus, it advocates for a human-centered approach grounded in “phygital phenomenology” that incorporates technology without diminishing authentic experiences (Batat, 2025). This human-centric approach is reflected in how phygital service inclusion requires new principles and competencies to ensure accessibility across diverse communities (Saragih, 2025). However, the methods by which grassroots esports providers achieve this remain unclear. Winell et al. (2023) demonstrated how customer engagement behaviors differ across physical and digital platforms, raising questions about how esports events maintain engagement across co-present and virtual audiences. Similarly, service design scholarship emphasizes the importance of practitioner-led insights in advancing phygital strategies (Čaić et al., 2025), and research on extended reality experiences points to both the opportunities and challenges of creating seamless multisensory engagement (Dastane et al., 2025). These studies highlight that phygitality has gained traction in the retail, cultural and technological domains (Batat, 2022; Mele et al., 2024). It has recently been applied to sport in contexts such as hybrid competition formats (Khizbullina et al., 2025), yet its application to the management of grassroots esports events remains unexplored, especially in relation to inclusion and sustainability (McCauley et al., 2023). The interdisciplinary potential of esports (Brock, 2023) as a future lab for understanding the digital society (Pizzo et al., 2022) aligns with calls for the application of meta-theoretical frameworks such as PSR that are capable of advancing both scholarship and practice within contemporary phygital service ecosystems (Batat, 2025; Brock, 2023; Pizzo et al., 2022).

Esports has experienced significant growth since 2014 (Scholz, 2019), and LAN events represent a critical site for extending both PSR and esports scholarship. Unlike commercial providers, grassroots LAN organizers must deliver seamless physical–digital integration under resource constraints, relying on volunteer labor, borrowed infrastructure and community networks (McCauley et al., 2023). They embody the essence of phygitality, not through technological sophistication, but through a creative, human-centric design that maintains continuity between online and offline experiences, as suggested by the PSR (Batat, 2025). Recent research on professional esports tournaments has provided valuable insights into phygital challenges. Baudet and Parmentier (2025) used Batat’s (2022) Phygital Customer Experience (PH-CX) framework to explore how producers manage the experience of the audience as professional players compete before both live and digital audiences. This raises important questions about how LAN organizers manage complex multi-stakeholder environments, how the six experiential pillars of the PH-CX framework manifest under such conditions, and how grassroots organizers adapt Baudet and Parmentier’s strategies to resource-constrained environments. Accordingly, this study addresses the following research question:

To answer this question, we conducted a qualitative study in Sweden, a mature esports market that provides valuable insights (Cestino et al., 2023; McCauley et al., 2020; Nyström et al., 2022). Interviews with 28 LAN organizers were analyzed through the lens of the PH-CX framework (Batat, 2022) and Baudet and Parmentier (2025) strategic challenges of bridging, amplifying, restricting and transposing. This yielded five key management dimensions:

1. Managing interaction;

2. Managing time and space;

3. Managing cooperation and competition;

4. Establishing phygital foundations; and

5. Sustaining phygital communities.

Through these dimensions, we introduce the concept of “human-centered phygital orchestration,” showing how seamless physical–digital integration can be achieved through community practices, temporal coordination and multisensory design rather than technological sophistication, extending PSR (Batat, 2025) into resource-constrained, community-driven contexts and advancing understanding of sustainability in phygital service ecosystems.

Esports represent a cultural phenomenon that has evolved beyond traditional sports constraints in digitized environments (Scholz, 2020), encompassing diverse games, audiences and participant roles (Cestino et al., 2023; Chan et al., 2022). While the industry can be viewed as being in its “infancy,” it is increasingly relevant when considering the intersection of real and digital environments (Cranmer et al., 2021). Areas such as sports, marketing, branding and emerging technologies such as VR can benefit from understanding how esports exist and operate in these spaces (Cranmer et al., 2021). Professional esports tournaments are inherently a hybrid experience, combining live audiences with a large online viewership (Kunz et al., 2021) that can be considered a social phygital experience (Baudet and Parmentier, 2025).

Most esports games are social, with many requiring online teamplay (Scholz, 2019). These online relationships can motivate attendance at events such as LANs, as players consolidate these friendships in the real world (McCauley et al., 2019; Taylor and Witkowski, 2010). The social aspect of gaming means that consumers can engage in specific games, often forming gaming communities. The esports audience is inherently comfortable with digital environments and enthusiastic when engaging with the context (Scholz, 2019), resulting in immersion. Games are played online and offline, with players increasingly using diverse technologies by live-streaming their own play or watching others stream their play on platforms such as Twitch (Sjöblom et al., 2019). When players engage in online gaming or play at a LAN event, it represents a form of “public play,” where achievements and progress may motivate more engagement than nonvisible private play (Siemens et al., 2015).

The first LANs were created as functional solutions to the inadequate capabilities of the early Internet (Taylor, 2012). Similar to how competitive esports tournaments represent phygital experiences (Baudet and Parmentier, 2025), modern LAN events encapsulate social experiences in both physical and digital realms (McCauley et al., 2023). A LAN event can range from commercial Mega-LANs, such as DreamHack, to smaller informal LANs, where friends gather in their living rooms to play (Taylor and Witkowski, 2010), characterized not only by playing games but also by social interaction through the shared culture of gaming (Ackermann, 2012). Events can also involve other activities within the integration of subcultures and nongame-based activities (McCauley et al., 2023; Taylor and Witkowski, 2010).

During LAN events, people engage with games through “networked play as production made possible by players’ interactions within a network of human and nonhuman actors, encompassing both offline and computer-mediated activities” (Taylor et al., 2014, p. 775). LANs serve as the bridge between online competitive play and the authentic audience-facing experience of competitive video gaming at the grassroots and amateur levels. LAN organizers invite players to co-create value and share their knowledge (Hollebeek et al., 2019). For physical attendees, a LAN can be viewed as a space that brings their digital identity, community and practices into the physical world. Organizing LAN events represents a complicated undertaking that requires time, effort and know-how (Helmefalk et al., 2024), particularly as technological trends can shift attendees’ expectations (McCauley et al., 2023).

Research emphasizes that consumers are subject to a more digitalized consumer journey than previously (Mele and Russo-Spena, 2022). New interconnected technologies have created opportunities to enhance the immersive nature of experiences (Pangarkar et al., 2022), eliminating the need for physical presence. However, Batat (2021) emphasized that capturing a holistic experience requires a comprehensive and integrative approach.

Hybridity has also been used to describe situations and contexts in which offline and online settings are present, such as in esports and LANs (e.g. Ekdahl, 2022; McCauley et al., 2020; Xu, 2023). Therefore, it is imperative to compare these two concepts. While both terms involve a blend of physical/offline and digital/online, phygital is more specifically focused on the seamless, integrated experience and spatial overlap within designed environments (Batat, 2022; Mele et al., 2024; Mele and Russo-Spena, 2025; Pangarkar et al., 2022; Shukla et al., 2023), whereas hybridity is a broader term used to describe combinations of physical and digital elements in activities, methods, and strategies (e.g. Ekdahl, 2022; Goebeler et al., 2021; McCauley et al., 2025). Given the characteristics of LANs established previously, as described by McCauley et al. (2023), phygital can be considered a more appropriate conceptualization for such human-centric designed environments.

Over the past five years, articles have emphasized phygital contexts in diverse areas, including services, luxury brands, museums and destinations (Banik and Gao, 2023; Bevolo and Amati, 2024; Clemente et al., 2024; Kumar et al., 2025). Despite some criticism that the phygital is similar to omni-channels (Klaus, 2024), phygital models (e.g., ERT, PSR) are emphasized as relevant for organizations to understand the seamless integration of physical and digital spaces and how actors navigate and manage these spaces in a holistic ecosystem (Batat, 2022; Batat, 2025).

To understand consumer experience in phygital settings, a conceptual framework has become popular, specifically the PH-CX framework (Batat, 2022). This framework is grounded in the broader paradigm of PSR, which prioritizes human logic over technological sophistication as the central driver of value creation across hybrid physical-digital ecosystems (Batat, 2025). Recent methodological scholarship emphasizes the need for interpretivist approaches when studying phygital environments, particularly the importance of understanding how physical and digital experiences are interconnected (Yao et al., 2024). In terms of esports, a recent study by Baudet and Parmentier (2025) used the PH-CX framework to explore consumer/audience experiences within competitive tournaments, demonstrating its applicability to complex multi-actor environments. The PH-CX framework consists of three key components that influence the design of PH-CX, namely, driving forces, connectors and pillars. It also involves two ongoing processes: digitalization (shifting from physical to digital) and physicalization (shifting from digital to physical). The starting point for designing phygital experiences is consumers and their perception of the value (intrinsic, e.g. economic and extrinsic, e.g. hedonism) they derive from consumption experiences.

The first element in the framework is called driving forces. The goal is to create experiences that prevent value disconnections and enhance seamless transition between offline and online. The drivers, forces and pillars are connectors or points of contact as links between brands, companies, and customers, going beyond simple touchpoint logic. These include media, digital, physical and human connectors. Finally, to comprehend the holistic perspective on experiences, the pillars separate them into the following six outcomes. Practicality refers to the functional benefits (e.g. convenience) that consumers derive from their experiences. Sociability refers to the importance of social interaction in experiences that occur both physically and digitally. Immersivity refers to the state of captivation from the experience when interacting with an organization. Technicality refers to the success of technology implementation in a journey, such as ease of use and adaptability. Sensoriality encompasses the human senses and how they, when in interplay, generate pleasant and holistic experiences. Finally, Affectivity is the manifestation and effect of emotions when moving between physical and digital settings. In summary, this framework suggests that a phygital strategy requires a holistic and systemic approach across different functions and departments within a company (Batat, 2022).

Effective phygital service management depends on practitioner-led adaptation of strategies to the specific conditions and constraints of each context (Čaić et al., 2025). In esports, this is particularly complex, given the multiple co-present actor groups whose engagement must be simultaneously orchestrated across physical and digital spaces (Kunz et al., 2021).

Baudet and Parmentier (2025) identified four strategic challenges that producers face when managing social phygital experiences during esports tournaments. Bridging involves connecting virtual gameplay with physical audience experiences, as sharing information with online audiences improves their LAN experience. Amplifying refers to enhancing the atmosphere across online and offline contexts, restricting connections with the management of conflicting demands between the online and offline contexts, and transposing refers to transferring the social atmosphere between these realities. While these strategies provide a valuable framework for understanding phygital experience management, they were developed in professional tournament contexts with dedicated producers and substantial resources. In contrast, PSR emphasizes the specific human, cultural and resource conditions of each service context (Batat, 2025), which remain underexplored in resource-constrained contexts across extended temporal phases.

The PH-CX framework and broader PSR paradigm are relevant to our study as they address the complexity of managing offline and online settings evident in esports contexts. While Baudet and Parmentier (2025) examined triadic interactions between producers, performers and audiences in large-scale tournaments, our study extends this understanding by focusing on how LAN organizers operationalize the management of complex phygital environments at the grassroots level. Given that LAN organizers seek to build long-term inclusive communities with limited resources (McCauley et al., 2023), the LAN context provides an area aligned with the human-centric, positive impact and poly-creation aspects core to PSR’s philosophical foundations (Batat, 2025).

This study used a qualitative research design to explore the complex, multifaceted nature of grassroots LAN organization within phygital environments. Given the exploratory nature of understanding how organizers manage sustainable phygital events, a qualitative approach enables deep contextual insights into the lived experiences and management practices (Nunan et al., 2017). This study adopts a deductive analytical approach, applying Batat’s (2022) PH-CX framework to examine how its theoretical constructs manifest in grassroots esports contexts. This framework was selected for its comprehensive treatment of physical-digital integration, although we acknowledge that its original development for commercial retail contexts may present limitations when applied to community-based gaming environments. The deductive approach allows for a systematic examination of how established phygital principles operate under resource-constrained conditions while remaining open to emergent themes that extend beyond the original framework. Sweden was selected as the research context due to its mature esports infrastructure, established LAN culture and significant policy support for gaming initiatives (Cestino et al., 2023; McCauley et al., 2020).

The target population comprised active LAN organizers across Sweden who had organized at least two events in the past two years, with many participants having had experience far beyond this. This criterion ensured that the participants possessed sufficient experience to provide meaningful insights into sustainable organizing practices. A purposive sampling strategy was employed, combining initial convenience sampling with subsequent snowball sampling to achieve maximum variation across different types of LAN events and organizational structures. Initial participants were identified through the first author’s established esports research network, Swedish esports organization membership lists, regional gaming association contacts and social media groups dedicated to LAN organizing. Snowball sampling proceeded through systematic referrals, where each participant was asked to recommend other organizers who managed different types of events, including variations in size, commercial versus nonprofit status, and regional location, while representing underrepresented demographics where possible. Despite systematic efforts to recruit female organizers through targeted outreach to women’s gaming groups, female-focused LAN events, and gender-inclusive gaming organizations, the final sample included 28 LAN organizers with 25 male and three female participants, reflecting broader gender imbalances in esports organizing (McCauley et al., 2020; Yu et al., 2022). The sample composition included organizers with experience in regional nonprofit LANs, commercial gaming events, educational institution LANs and community center events. The participants’ ages ranged from 23 to 48 years. The sample size was determined by theoretical saturation, which was reached when interviews ceased, generating new themes or dimensions relevant to the research question.  AppendixTable A1 provides a summary of the participant characteristics.

Semi-structured interviews were selected to balance systematic data collection with the flexibility to explore emergent themes (Malhotra et al., 2012). The interview domains included personal gaming and organizing background, event planning and management processes, stakeholder relationship management, technology integration strategies, community building approaches, sustainability challenges and solutions and design. The domains were sufficiently broad to be subsequently analyzed through the lens of phygitality. Interviews were conducted using multiple modalities to accommodate participant preferences and geographical constraints, including face-to-face interviews (n = 15) and video conferencing (n = 13). All the participants provided informed consent for recording and transcription. No sensitive data were gathered, and the participants were anonymized. The interviews averaged 77 min, with a range of 45–120 min. To address potential modality effects, the interview protocols were standardized across formats and the interviewers noted any technical issues or communication barriers. Interviews were conducted in the participants’ preferred language, either Swedish (19) or English (9). Swedish interviews were professionally translated using a forward-backward translation process involving professional translation from Swedish to English, independent back-translation from English to Swedish, comparison and resolution of discrepancies and validation with original Swedish speakers. Translated transcripts were reviewed by bilingual research team members to ensure semantic equivalence and preservation of the cultural context.

Data analysis used deductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Fife and Gossner, 2024) guided by Batat’s (2022) PH-CX framework. Coding involves categorizing data to label them and identifying abstract concepts (Spiggle, 1994). This deductive approach uses the previous literature in the coding process (Azungah, 2018; Gale et al., 2013). The six experiential pillars of practicality, sociability, immersivity, technicality, sensoriality and affectivity served as initial deductive codes, while remaining open to the emergence of inductive themes from the data.

Initial coding involved applying deductive codes based on the PH-CX framework and developing inductive codes for content not captured by the existing framework. Baudet and Parmentier (2025) four strategies of bridging, amplifying, restricting and transposing were subsequently applied during theme development as a secondary analytical lens, enabling the interpretation of how the PH-CX pillars manifest as strategic management challenges in grassroots LAN contexts. Theme development included grouping related codes into preliminary themes and subthemes. Theme refinement involved iterative refinement through team discussions, mapping themes to the research question, validation against original data and development of the final thematic framework.

This research adopted a hermeneutic approach, where the first author served as an insider within the Swedish esports field, having attended LAN events and engaged with the organizer communities over several years. Similar to Huston et al. (2021), the first author was already a member of the community prior to beginning the research, providing pre-understanding of the context where the interpreter’s own experiences combined with knowledge accumulated through literature provided the basis for understanding and interpreting data. This facilitated access to participants with whom rapport had already been established, and the use of the community’s specific language and terminology in the interviews. The second and third authors provided alternative perspectives as cultural outsiders when analyzing the data, contributing to the research integrity through critical questioning and alternative interpretations (Huston et al., 2021). The data structure is illustrated in Figure 1.

The PSR paradigm has been theorized as a meta-theoretical paradigm that requires empirical grounding across diverse sector-specific contexts (Batat, 2025). Building on Baudet and Parmentier (2025) four key strategies for managing social phygital experiences in esports tournaments, this study extends their insights into grassroots LAN contexts, specifically among amateur LAN organizers. We find that they operationalize social phygital experiences and strategic challenges through five key management dimensions that operate across extended temporal phases before, during and after events. Within each dimension, we identified which of Baudet and Parmentier (2025) key strategies are the primary drivers, the key pillars applicable to the PH + CX framework (Batat, 2022), and the temporal flow that underpins how LAN organizers operationalize it (see Figure 2).

We conceptualize “human-centered phygital orchestration” as the process through which actors coordinate social interactions, multisensory environments, and temporal flows to enable seamless physical–digital experiences without reliance on advanced technological infrastructures. In resource-constrained contexts such as grassroots LANs, this study extends PSR by demonstrating that phygital value is co-created through community practices, volunteer coordination and experiential design, positioning grassroots actors as key orchestrators of sustainable phygital service ecosystems.

The primary strategies used were bridging and transposing (Baudet and Parmentier, 2025), and the primary pillars were affectivity and sociability (Batat, 2022). Temporal flow is seen on platforms such as Discord as part of the pre-event, face-to-face interactions during the event and memories shared online.

There were recurring similarities in how the participants gained and shared experiences in the LAN context. Before an event, LANs communicate via different channels, including visiting schools, advertisements, word-of-mouth and social media, such as Facebook, X and forums. Communication between participants during the event takes place digitally on platforms such as Discord, and clusters of people also communicate physically, thus bridging audiences. As M6 stated: “If you create something unique then that is why you go there instead of sitting at home. In addition to the social part that must continue to grow and be important, how to create more social platforms at DreamHack so that means that more people come for social reasons. Because it is more soft value than hard value”. The findings highlight online streaming as an important method of including external consumers and engaging them in the service, even though they are not physically participating, as it shows a fun event that they would want to join in the future. LAN events are streamed by organizers to build and strengthen the ties between those playing and attending, implementing a transposing strategy.

From a LAN cultural perspective, gaming is perceived as a stereotypically male-dominated environment, impacting affectivity. Some participants expressed these existing knowledge structures as prejudices, resulting in toxicity that may occur sometimes, which then impacts knowledge sharing, which needs to be managed. LANS are less male-oriented and more inclusive, engaging more women and suggesting initiatives to rectify this imbalance. LAN events are slowly succeeding in engaging more females (and other less-represented groups) by making LAN culture more accessible to a broader audience through various initiatives. As one participant highlighted “We worked pretty much on that actively in tournaments, in marketing, toward parents so that the parents felt safe to both get there with their children overall, not just daughters as well, but that they could actually get there and be on site and also help with that whole piece and know how they can handle it at home as well.” (M15). The findings suggest that the social experiences of the LAN influence their evaluation and impression of the event, and that organizers should make the event as welcoming as possible for all, thereby extending the online interaction to include a physical one. The custom of bringing friends to the event becomes an asset and resource for organizers to sustain social interactions between players and the audience. Participants recognized the need to make the information shared via these channels a prerequisite for acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary for subsequent value co-creation. Practices such as streaming, which originated in esports, showcase how LANs evolve as phygital experiences, as many engage with physical events at a distance through digital means. Attendees at LANs stream their experiences through their own channels, further co-creating value at the intersection of the physical and digital, and enabling social co-presence and participation (Meng-Lewis et al., 2022). This peer-driven dynamic exemplifies what Batat (2025) terms the poly-creation of value, as value is shaped by multiple simultaneous contributors, including volunteers, streamers and community members, whose collective participation defines the LAN experience in ways that no single organizer can orchestrate alone. Effectively managing and organizing events requires leveraging existing platforms and understanding the tools through which users communicate.

Amplifying and Restricting are key strategies used by LANs managers (Baudet and Parmentier, 2025) together with the immersivity, sensoriality and practicality pillars (Batat, 2022) within the physical and temporal settings in which these digital-physical interactions unfold. From a temporal perspective, organizers manage venue preparation pre-event, multisensory orchestration during the event, and the cultivation of nostalgic memory post-event.

The LAN setting is a phygital place (or servicescape) where players and experiences combine their resources to gain a full benefit, impacting their perception of value (Ballantyne and Nilsson, 2017) and providing hedonic benefits. Many organizers have refined the experiences and routines of LAN parties, with an emphasis on hedonic values, such as pleasant experiences in different spaces. Furthermore, the participants implied that previously utilitarian problems (e.g. access to a toilet and Internet speed) are now more complex and intricate, requiring consideration of cognitive appraisal and experiences (Claffey and Brady, 2017). The findings highlight that the space or location where a LAN event occurs must be optimized within practical limitations to create phygital engagement.

One recurring theme of the experiential properties of LAN events concerns the multisensory aspects of LAN settings. This underscores the significance of sensoriality and the resulting affective pillars (Batat, 2022) in enhancing engagement within phygital environments. In the interviews, the atmosphere was described as channeling a general feeling of belonging and a shared positive mood that impacted the LAN brand. In LANs, consumers move through various “happenings” and fun offerings and engage in different activities, regardless of their online or offline status. The findings highlight the significance of emotional and holistic experiences at a LAN event and reflect the complexity of understanding phygital experiences and associated emotions (Mele et al., 2021). While many digital outlets simulate physical experiences, such as visual and auditory cues, multisensory environments are unparalleled by the amount of sensorial information they can provide and may have a stronger impact on the holistic phygital experience (immersivity), facilitating various behaviors (Harmeling et al., 2017) and resources. This reflects what Batat and Hammedi (2023) identify as “extended sensation” in phygital experiences, where sensory technologies create immersive environments that prevent disconnections during transitions between physical and digital spaces. While LAN organizers may lack sophisticated sensory technologies, they achieve similar sensory continuity through creative atmospheric design. Consequently, access to the LAN is part of the core service, with the physical setting acting as a platform for incorporating phygital activities that co-create value and drive engagement. For example, M5 stated: “Smaller LANs would have up to 50 people in it – that could be like a few people in one corner like laughing their asses off and some guy goes, ‘What are you laughing at?’, ‘Oh, I’ll send [it] you!’, and end like that. [It could] be like a video or a picture and [it] spreads like wildfire and I mean [it is] five seconds before the whole LAN party is like laughing their asses off”.

Esports games and LAN involvement have been presented to consumers at a young age, when many have abundant resources in terms of time for socializing and playing games. As gaming has matured, so has its audience. While younger attendees have fewer responsibilities, more free time, and have grown up with gaming and esports as part of the mainstream, they constitute a large percentage of any LAN audience. Esports is youth-rooted but not youth-exclusive (Scholz, 2019), requiring organizers to accommodate a range of demographics. Several of them [the older gamers] expressed that they go there for the nostalgic feeling – “work with the nostalgic feeling, it is that they like to play Quake or some other game that was popular then, some retro computers and a small, secluded area if there are sufficiently large premises. It is to both market and work more toward that clientele and what they want.” (M15)

Organizers are also designing LANS to be inclusive of families:

LAN events provide individual, spatial, relational, situational, and temporal aspects that constitute a unique context (Batat, 2022). These results capture the temporal dimension, which emphasize novel factors like nostalgia, growth, and changing expectations as well as encouraging visitors to engage across platforms and time. Younger consumers require more cognitive (e.g., information-based) reasons to engage, while older generations can be influenced by more affective marketing strategies (Rather and Hollebeek, 2021). This temporal fluidity across generations reflects what Batat (2025) terms “liquid service experiences” where time, space, and modality are no longer fixed, requiring organizers to design phygital environments that are simultaneously nostalgic and forward-looking, accommodating consumers who move between digital and physical realms at fundamentally different speeds and with fundamentally different expectations. In line with this, LAN organizers must attract younger consumers away from the convenience and social aspects of online gaming from home, while for older generations, this involves tapping into their previous positive experiences. M21 stated: “I think we need to continue to try to reinvent ourselves always to like attract to the new generation of gamers and stay on top of what’s cool and what people are enjoying, then reach new people too”. This specific example underlines the practical challenges in optimizing phygital environments to accommodate different levels of digital experience across targeted segments, as well as emphasizing the importance of spatial and co-presence (Meng-Lewis et al., 2022). These aspects are also associated with the requirement of a basic infrastructure (Section 4.4) to create sensory-rich environments that sustain long-term communities (Section 4.5).

Bridging and restricting are key strategies (Baudet and Parmentier, 2025) for managing the interactions between those attending and stakeholders, which relies on the use of the pillars of practicality and sociability (Batat, 2025). From a temporal perspective, there are continuous negotiations between all stakeholders prior to and after the event, as well as management during the event.

Esports symbiosis demonstrates how esports and LAN’s strong intertwined history is evidenced by the LAN event acting as the primary opportunity for players to compete in person when esports first began. This symbiosis reflects what Baudet and Parmentier (2025) identified as the fundamental challenge of social phygital experiences – managing the co-presence of actors anchored in virtual reality (performers) with those anchored in physicality (audiences) while maintaining the integrity of both experiences. In LAN activities, those who avoided face-to-face competition and competed exclusively online were negatively referred to as “LAN Dodgers” (Taylor, 2012). While LAN parties initially provided an impetus for esports, they may now be a contributing factor to the sustainability of LANs in Sweden and other Nordic countries. “I think it’s a hard time convincing them that they should come and experience it but when they come and experience it then you’re on like the easy way because then you’re at your home arena”. (M10)

Successfully integrating esports into events requires cooperation from many stakeholders, including game publishers, digital platforms and teams, as well as maintaining attractive value propositions through optimal digital experiences that allow seamless engagement between spaces (Mele et al., 2021). Organizers face competition from esports to attract attendees away from the comfort of home gaming while also experiencing challenges in delivering literal competition in the form of tournaments. As esports have risen in global prominence, there has been an increased role within the modern LAN event from the organizers’ perspective, which has caused them to adapt how they approach attendees. This represents a long-term symbiosis between LAN parties and esports, which have consistently alternated in terms of roles and relationship dynamics, with some taking it seriously and others competing for social entertainment (Hedlund, 2023). Competitions serve as a participatory and spectatorship function within modern LAN parties. As stated by F1:

Furthermore, the optimal way to engage external stakeholders is to showcase the event itself physically. While events can be explained or showcased digitally, tangible phygital experiences are most relevant for gaining support from these actors:

Organizers must increasingly accommodate the rise of esports while maintaining and conveying traditional LAN values. Esports have high production values within large stadiums and have consistently evolved in their engagement with gamers (Ji and Hanna, 2020). This evolution is evident in the increased expectations that organizers experience at all levels of LAN offerings. Organizers encounter challenges in consistently producing esports content at a professional level to maximize engagement. For example, M13 stated, “As soon as you get an esport there, people expect something and then they expect what they have seen on TV. It’s about what people expect.”

Streaming tournaments enhance the LAN brand by potentially attracting future attendees who view the event from their homes and involve those who cannot attend physically. Users participate by viewing, sharing, and commenting on participatory spectatorship online and offline. Esports continues to evolve beyond the origins of LAN parties, yet its role in modern LANs is valuable for attendees and a challenge for organizers. The ongoing symbiosis is best encapsulated in how M19 frames the potential alternating emphasis on events:

Implementing amplifying and restricting as enablers (Baudet and Parmentier, 2025) and the pillars of practicality and technicality (Batat, 2022), LAN organizers must set up the infrastructure as well as conduct maintenance during and post-event evaluation.

A foundational principle of PSR is that technological mediation must serve human needs rather than drive them, with service innovation remaining grounded in human dignity and values before sophisticated phygital experiences can be realized (Batat, 2025). This is most evident in the grassroots LAN context. LAN organizers must first establish the basic technical and physical foundations that enable all phygital experiences before sophisticated interaction management (Section 4.1), immersive spatial experiences (Section 4.2) or complex stakeholder relationships (Section 4.3) can be realized. Rather than representing a limitation, this embodies what Batat (2025) identifies as PSR’s multimodal integration and continuity principle, the requirement that phygital enablers, whether human, physical or technological, must ensure seamless transitions between environments before value poly-creation can occur.

LAN organizers face pressure to establish the basic structural and technical foundations that enable all other phygital experiences. Our findings show that utilitarian offerings (often connected to the locale, electricity and toilets) are required before hedonic aspects (fun events, tournaments) can provide value to attendees. As one participant put it, “Everyone has internet, you have power, sit down and play, if you don’t have those three things, you don’t have a LAN party” (M11). Extending this, another participant (M4) stated, “A LAN definitely doesn’t have to be super professional, or it doesn’t have to look super professional as long as the basic human factors work, there is food available and there is toilet paper on the toilet and the internet works and people are kind”. Once the basics are in place, consumers can co-create value and engage with the LAN brand by being physically present, but LAN’s phygital settings enable the best outcomes.

While the emphasis in Batat’s (2022) holistic framework often rests on the digital aspects of any phygital environment, the findings reinforce that the utilitarian (practical) considerations of the physical environment are key as a base to allow engagement between spaces (technicality). The surrounding emotional and social activities continue to drive attendance, reflecting what Batat (2025) identifies as a core paradox within phygital service ecosystems: as digital capabilities expand, the human and physical dimensions of the service experience become more rather than less significant. The temporal dimension also shapes this foundational work, as the organizers recognize the constant need to update technology and norms to solve practical problems that hinder fluid experiences. This reflects the PSR’s principle of strategic organizational transformation (Batat, 2025), where technologies are tools for enhancing human-first experience, not ends in themselves. In doing so, grassroots LAN organizers demonstrate that PSR’s foundational logic is achievable precisely because it is human-driven and that well-managed phygital foundations make all higher-order dimensions of the LAN experience possible.

Implementing transposing and bridging as strategies (Baudet and Parmentier, 2025) and affectivity, sociability and immersivity (Batat, 2025) are used in LANs are used throughout to cultivate, create and strengthen community relationships, as seen in the findings.

LANs go beyond a single experience in a physical space and represent an ongoing digital consumer journey that culminates in a real-world experience in the phygital realm (Del Vecchio et al., 2023). In this sense, grassroots LAN organizing operationalizes what Batat (2025) identifies as the phygitalization of positive impact, or the integration of individual satisfaction, community resilience, and broader societal outcomes within physical-digital ecosystems. LAN organizers achieve this not through technological investment but through the human-first logic that PSR places at the center of sustainable phygital service design (Batat, 2025).

Numerous event organizers have learned the properties of gaming and its culture from an early age by playing games and sharing positive experiences with others, resulting in positive emotions and memories that form part of their self-identity. This reflects the participants’ affectivity, positive emotions, and memories associated with their first LAN experience, resulting in recurring behavior. Early experiences in esports have been shown to motivate grassroots collective action (Cestino et al., 2023), and this is evident in how organizers are motivated to expend effort in organizing LANs parties to share experiences. Similar to identity-based attachment, participants continually learn new rituals and anchor new expectations while comparing and confirming their self-identity with others by investing their resources, and how users in virtual communities help each other out (Kim, 2018). This may also explain why some participants emphasized the importance of continuity when organizing LAN events to connect with their previous positive experiences. McCauley et al. (2023) demonstrate through their study of the Birdie LAN, how organizers actively cultivate what they termed “the Birdie feeling,” a distinctive cultural identity rooted in fun, creativity, and inclusivity that is systematically maintained and passed between generations of participants. These organizers assume responsibility not only for delivering events but also for preserving and transmitting gaming culture by creating welcoming environments, teaching new skills, and fostering social connections that transcend individual gatherings. The findings in this study extend this by revealing how personal transformation facilitation, long-term friendship building and emotional support network development operate as core strategies for sustaining phygital communities, with organizers functioning as cultural intermediaries who bridge digital gaming practices with meaningful offline social experiences that contribute to both individual well-being and broader societal legitimacy for gaming culture.

This study examined how grassroots organizers manage LANs as sustainable phygital events that engage modern esports audiences, facilitating the co-creation of value between the organizers and attendees. As per Figure 2, we conceptualize this as “human-centered phygital orchestration.” The discussion addresses two interconnected themes: theoretical contributions to PSR and practical implications for sustainable esports ecosystem development.

Our findings and dimensions demonstrate that Batat’s (2022) six experiential pillars – practicality, sociability, immersivity, technicality, sensoriality and affectivity – can be effectively realized through human-centric approaches rather than sophisticated technology alone. This challenges the implicit assumption in much PSR that seamless physical-digital integration requires a substantial technological infrastructure (Batat and Hammedi, 2023). Instead, grassroots LAN organizers achieve phygital experiences through creative community management, volunteer coordination, and atmospheric design that maximizes the use of existing resources.

The practicality pillar, for instance, manifests not through advanced digital interfaces but through organizers ensuring basic infrastructure needs (e.g. Internet, power and seating) that enable attendees to fluidly move between gaming and social activities. Sociability emerges through carefully orchestrated pre-event online engagement, face-to-face interaction facilitation and post-event memory sharing, rather than through sophisticated social media integration platforms. This human-centric realization of phygital principles extends Batat’s (2022) framework by demonstrating its applicability beyond retail contexts and revealing how resource constraints can drive innovation in experience design.

Our findings extend Baudet and Parmentier (2025) identification of four strategies for managing social phygital experiences (bridging, amplifying, restricting and transposing) by showing their application by grassroots organizers throughout the LAN experience. Bridging strategies in LAN contexts operate across longer timeframes than professional tournaments, connecting online gaming communities with physical events through sustained digital engagement that begins months before events and continues through memory-sharing afterwards. Unlike the producer-audience bridging observed by Baudet and Parmentier (2025), grassroots organizers facilitate peer-to-peer bridging, where attendees become content creators through streaming and social media sharing. Amplifying strategies rely on multisensory environmental design rather than professional audio-visual production. LAN organizers create an atmosphere through practices grounded in lighting, sound design, food experiences and spatial layout that enhance both physical presence and digital engagement. This demonstrates how amplification can be achieved through creative atmospheric management rather than through technological sophistication. Restricting strategies manifest differently in resource-constrained environments, where organizers must balance community values with commercial pressures, manage diverse stakeholder expectations, and navigate tensions between casual gaming culture and professional esports standards. This represents a more complex form of restriction management than that observed in professional contexts. Transposing strategies extend beyond Baudet and Parmentier (2025) event-focused analysis to encompass community sustainability. Grassroots organizers actively transfer positive emotions, social connections and gaming achievements between the digital and physical realms to build lasting community attachments that transcend individual events. Crucially, our study reveals two dimensions absent from professional tournament research: the foundational infrastructure requirements that enable any phygital strategy implementation, and the long-term community sustainability outcomes that grassroots organizers achieve through their extended temporal engagement with participants.

The results of this study respond to Saragih’s (2025) and Batat’s (2025) call for new principles and competencies to ensure phygital service accessibility across diverse communities. The inclusion of diverse partnerships and accommodation measures demonstrates how grassroots organizers proactively address demographic imbalances and cultural barriers. However, our predominantly male sample (89%) reveals the ongoing challenges in achieving true inclusivity, suggesting that while organizers recognize inclusion as important, structural barriers persist in grassroots gaming contexts.

The temporal dimension uncovered in our findings adds further nuance to the understanding of inclusion in esports environments, with LANs organizers accommodating both younger gamers and older participants and varying levels of digital literacy and phygital service familiarity across generations (Saragih, 2025). Our participants demonstrated awareness of this challenge through initiatives such as family oriented events and separate retro gaming areas, reflecting attempts to bridge the need for practitioner-led insights to advance phygital strategies. (Čaić et al., 2025).

Following the principles outlined in the service design literature, grassroots organizers function as cultural intermediaries who translate digital gaming practices into physically accessible experiences, creating what one participant termed “a place for me” through careful attention to multisensory design, safe spaces, and varied activity offerings that accommodate different comfort levels with technology and social interaction. This aligns with recent calls for service design to move beyond output-centric approaches toward outcome-oriented frameworks that embed accessibility into the organizational culture rather than treating it as an add-on feature (Čaić et al., 2025).

This study complements Mele et al. (2024, 2021) work on phygital customer journeys by revealing how grassroots initiatives create more participatory and extended journey experiences. Unlike commercial phygital journeys, where organizations orchestrate customer touchpoints, LAN attendees actively co-create their journeys through Discord participation, event streaming and community-building activities. This represents participant-orchestrated phygital journeys, where community members drive their engagement across both physical and digital spaces. Huston et al. (2021) suggested that consumer journeys in esports incorporate multiple consumption practices beyond the professional play trajectory, including cultural aspects like community engagement, narratives and social connections, as well as skills-based aspects focused on gameplay improvement. Our study extends this conceptualization by suggesting that LANs represent a key physical grounding within the overall phygital experience of the esports consumer journey.

The emotional engagement and belonging outcomes identified in our Sustaining Phygital Communities dimension demonstrate how phygital experiences can create lasting community value rather than transactional customer satisfaction. This extends Mele et al. (2024) practice-based approach by demonstrating how community practices, rather than organizational practices, sustain phygital engagement over time. Esports-based events, such as LANs, represent social phygital experiences in line with Baudet and Parmentier (2025) original conceptualization, but with a more embedded social aspect led by organizers to drive engagement.

Our findings directly address Nyström et al. (2022) identification of sustainability challenges across social and economic dimensions in esports while building on McCauley et al. (2023) initial work on the role of LAN organizers in creating engagement at events. The five management dimensions we identified demonstrate how grassroots organizers create social sustainability through inclusive community building, stakeholder education and cultivating long-term relationships.

The Managing Cooperation and Competition dimension particularly addresses Nyström et al. (2022) concern about balancing commercial pressures with community values. Our findings show how event organizers navigate this tension through strategic partnerships with municipalities, schools and local businesses that provide legitimacy and resources while maintaining community-oriented objectives. This demonstrates that social and economic sustainability in esports are indeed intertwined, as Nyström et al. (2022) suggested, with social value creation enabling economic viability at the grassroots level. This is reinforced by the updated sustainability research agenda proposed by Scholz and McCauley (2026), who identify grassroots-professional integration and community-driven value creation as critical, unresolved challenges for the esports ecosystem. It extends the knowledge developed in earlier work on the role of LAN organizers (McCauley et al., 2023) by expanding our understanding of how they operationalize and manage LANs within phygital experiences (Batat, 2022; Baudet and Parmentier, 2025).

Building on earlier work on legitimizing grassroots esports (Cestino et al., 2023; McCauley et al., 2020), our findings reveal how phygital events serve as crucial platforms for building legitimacy. The physical presence of gaming activities allows organizers to demonstrate tangible community benefits to skeptical stakeholders in ways that purely digital activities cannot. Municipal partners, parents and educators can observe social interaction, skill development and positive youth engagement firsthand, addressing concerns about the social value of gaming culture. The Establishing Phygital Foundations dimension shows how organizers build legitimacy through professional event management that meets institutional expectations while maintaining the authenticity of the gaming community.

Our findings extend existing esports ecosystem conceptualizations by positioning grassroots LANs in the modern era as foundational rather than peripheral actors. While Wong and Meng-Lewis (2023) focused on professional leagues and world championships as the primary value creators, our study demonstrates how grassroots organizers create essential social sustainability that supports the entire ecosystem. This reflects how esports emerged through bottom-up resource allocation (Scholz, 2019). LAN events serve as talent development platforms, community engagement spaces, and legitimacy-building venues that enable professional esports to flourish. The esports symbiosis identified in our findings reveals the ongoing interdependence between grassroots LANs and professional esports. Rather than being displaced by professional tournaments, LANs can/should adapt by incorporating esports elements while maintaining their community-oriented focus.

Our results demonstrate how phygital gaming communities navigate the challenges of contemporary digital life (Pizzo et al., 2022). The multisensory experiences and temporal influences we identified show how people seek authentic social connections and shared physical experiences as complements, rather than replacements, for digital engagement. We extend knowledge on how local actors and their services shape regional esports (McCauley et al., 2020) and, specifically, how LAN organizers can build inclusive communities that benefit society (McCauley et al., 2023). Community sustainability outcomes reveal how phygital environments can address social isolation and digital fatigue by providing meaningful offline connections anchored in shared digital interests. This aligns with how Scholz and McCauley (2026) frame the potential for esports as a mediator for the human aspects in a digitized society to potentially counterbalance issues such as AI dependency and instead act as a platform for 21st-century skills development.

This research demonstrates that grassroots LAN events can serve as vital community infrastructure that generates measurable social value through youth development, digital inclusion, and cultural participation. LAN organizers create sustainable phygital experiences not through expensive technology but through strategic community management, inclusive design practices, and partnerships with educational institutions and municipalities. These events function as talent development pipelines for the broader esports ecosystem while providing safe spaces for social connection, skill building, and cross-generational engagement. The findings reveal that successful LANs require modest but reliable foundational support, such as venue access, basic infrastructure, and promotional assistance, to deliver community benefits, including enhanced digital literacy, reduced social isolation, and pathways to recreational and professional gaming participation. For policymakers and funding bodies, supporting grassroots esports events represents a cost-effective investment in youth engagement infrastructure comparable to traditional sports facilities, with the added advantage of reaching digitally native populations who may not engage in conventional recreational programming. This research specifically identifies how LAN events build legitimacy for gaming culture, facilitate parent education, and create inclusive environments that actively address demographic imbalances, making them strategic partners for institutions seeking to support contemporary youth culture while promoting accessibility and social cohesion. As studies increasingly recognize the value of esports as a viable platform for developing 21^st-century skills (McCauley, 2025), LANs could serve as a vital resource for enabling this potential in society.

This study has several limitations that contextualize these contributions. First, while the Swedish context provides insights into mature esports markets, it may limit the transferability of findings to emerging markets with different cultural attitudes toward gaming and levels of institutional support. Thus, comparative studies across different cultural and regulatory contexts could examine how national gaming cultures and institutional support systems shape the phygital community management approaches. Second, the predominantly male sample of organizers, despite targeted recruitment efforts, limits insights into gendered approaches to inclusive organizing practices. Expanding research into other stakeholders, incorporating attendee, sponsor, municipal and family perspectives, could provide a more comprehensive understanding of phygital experience outcomes and community sustainability processes. Third, the application of Batat’s (2022) retail-focused PH-CX framework to community gaming contexts revealed valuable insights but may have imposed conceptual constraints that obscured gaming-specific phenomena. Future research should develop gaming-specific phygital frameworks that better capture the unique characteristics of competitive gaming communities, including identity performance, skill development and competitive social tensions.

Finally, the extensive LAN experience of many interviewees captured many important temporal dynamics in how phygital management approaches develop and change. Longitudinal research could examine how organizers adapt their strategies as gaming technologies, community expectations and stakeholder relationships evolve in the era of artificial intelligence. Such studies could reveal how sustainable community management adapts to changing technological and social conditions while maintaining core community values. Future research should adopt and extend “human-centered phygital orchestration” as an analytical lens across other resource-constrained service contexts, including community sport, cultural institutions and grassroots creative industries, to test its transferability beyond esports and establish its boundaries as a theoretical construct.

This study contributes to PSR by illuminating how grassroots LAN organizers manage phygital experiences under resource constraints, thus advancing theory beyond its traditional commercial applications. Through human-centered service design strategies rooted in sociability, affectivity, and practicality, the organizers create immersive, inclusive, and sustainable communities that bridge digital and physical realms. By extending Batat’s PH-CX framework and Baudet and Parmentier’s key strategies in the grassroots esports context, this study reveals the crucial role of creative and community-driven approaches in fostering sustainable phygital ecosystems. It demonstrates that successful phygital integration does not require sophisticated technology alone, but it hinges on temporal orchestration, inclusive values, and community legitimacy. Grassroots LANs are vital to the broader esports ecosystem, sustaining local gaming culture and informing the digital society on designing meaningful phygital experiences. By negotiating resource constraints and placing human connection, community resilience, and inclusive values at their core, LAN organizers represent an exemplar of the foundational principles that PSR advocates for the future of service design (Batat, 2025). Human-centered phygital orchestration represents a novel paradigm for advancing PSR beyond technology-dependent contexts and into the community-driven, resource-constrained environments that characterize much of contemporary digital culture.

The corresponding author’s (my) primary affiliation is Jönköping University, Sweden. According to the applicable law in Sweden (Kingdom of Sweden – Ethical Review Act 2003:460, Link to etikprovningsmyndighetenLink to the website of etikprovningsmyndigheten), ethical review is required only for research involving physical interventions on individuals, methods intended to affect participants physically or psychologically, identifiable biological material or the processing of sensitive personal data.

Because the present study gains informed consent from the participants, involved no intervention and did not process sensitive personal data as defined under Swedish legislation, formal ethical approval was not required under Swedish law. All procedures were conducted in accordance with applicable national regulations and institutional guidelines in both jurisdictions and with internationally recognized ethical principles for research involving human-related data, including the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki (Link to WMAwww.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki) and the Belmont Report (Link to HHs.govLink to the website of hhs.gov).

The submitted research was not funded and there are no conflicts of interest to declare. The authors sincerely appreciate the valuable feedback provided by anonymous reviewers, editors and colleagues on an earlier version of this work.