Purpose: This study was conducted to determine the attitudes of athletes involved in winter sports in Erzurum towards e-sports. E-sports, which have rapidly developed and attracted a broad audience in recent years, are especially popular among young people. In this context, examining the attitudes of winter sports athletes toward e-sports is significant in understanding their perspectives and interest in this emerging field of sports.

Materials and Methods: A descriptive survey model was employed in the study. While the population consisted of athletes engaged in winter sports in Erzurum, the research sample comprised 147 athletes, including 55 women and 92 men, who participated voluntarily. The "Personal Information Form," developed by the researchers, was used to gather demographic information. To assess attitudes towards e-sports, the "E-Sports Attitude Scale," a 5-point Likert scale with 18 items across three sub-dimensions (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral) developed by Savaş and Turan (2023), was applied. The normality of the data was checked using skewness and kurtosis tests. Frequency analysis was conducted to analyze the demographic characteristics of the participants, and descriptive statistics were applied to determine the overall mean and the sub-dimension means of the e-sports attitude scale. Independent Samples T-test was used for binary comparisons, while One-Way ANOVA was employed for comparisons between more than two groups. The homogeneity of variances in the One-Way ANOVA test was analyzed with Levene’s F-test, confirming that all variances were homogeneous.

Findings: A significant difference was found in the behavioral sub-dimension when comparing e-sports attitudes based on participants' education levels, while no significant differences were found between groups regarding gender, age, type of sport, or athletic experience.

Results: Participants with a high school education exhibited higher e-sports attitudes compared to those with a university degree. Additionally, it was observed that athletes engaged in winter sports had a moderate overall attitude towards e-sports.