Survival of Professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Teams: What Matters? A Research Note

Abstract

The role of national diversity in sports and esports teams is a well-established field of research. Nevertheless, earlier studies primarily concentrated on assessing performance, based on criteria like prize money or the frequency of podium finishes. In this paper, we analyze the esports data of professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams to shed light on the question of whether diverse teams survive longer. As a measure of diversity, we focus on the nationality of the players. The period investigated spans from 2012 to the middle of 2021. More than 200 teams are considered in the empirical analysis; 65% of these teams fail and do not survive. We also control for prize money as a time-dependent covariate. In addition, we account for the degree of competition over time. Our main findings are that prize money is a strong predictor of survival. There is a tendency for a higher degree of internationalization to increase the failure rate.