Dedicated Esports Arenas - Wishful Thinking or Next Step?
The Frankfurt Major 2015 setup - very close to that of TI5
Esports is an ever growing industry. In 2011 the Million Dollar prize pool fielded by Valve was considered insane and huge and just last year TI5 was able to distribute over 18 Million Dollars worth of prize money. As the viewership grew over the years, so did the need for bigger venues to host live audiences. In Dota 2, we went from being a small portion of Gamescom behind the Razer booth, over the elegant and tasteful Benaroya Hall seating roughly 2000 spectators to Key Arena with a capacity of close to 17,000 live spectators.
Plenty of big events now host their tournaments in big venues all over the world. As soon as tournament organizations announce their LAN details, the question arises as to how many visitors they can accommodate. Bringing Esports closer to mainstream media attention has always been something that the community and industry has strived for. There is something magical about seeing your favorite Esports teams compete in the same venue that have also hosted famous football teams. The atmosphere in a stadium setting is exhilarating and infectious.
As much as enjoyable these big moments are--the crowd screaming their lungs out as LighTofHeaveN unleashes Puppey’s Naga Counter to allow Dendi to steal the Ravage, or when Universe dunks the entirety of CDEC --they overshadow a lot of smaller problems and issues, some of which especially came to light at at last years The International.
Traditional sports events are not laid out to accommodate Esports events. If you’ve ever attended an Esports event or talked with fans during these events, there are many issues that surround them. Is it time then to see dedicated Esports arenas?
Esports events last way longer than a football match
The International 2015 stage and viewing setup
You won’t spend much more than 3 hours maximum in a stadium for a football match. That’s what the venue and everything surrounding it is designed for. From the pricing of food and drinks to the comfort of the seats, everything is adjusted and designed for a short period of time. Spending 10€ for a beer and a bratwurst during a football match seems much more acceptable than buying that for the entire day. If you attend a football match, you don’t expect to buy anything as proper meal, but during a day of Dota, you need a meal from somewhere, especially if you don’t have any alternatives outside of the stadium or aren’t allowed to bring your own.
The seats are not made to comfort you for 10 hours. To be fair, that would be unhealthy for any seat. Some events include activities outside, such as signing sessions or sponsor booths. Not only does it increase the value of attending an event, as you get to meet pro players and can enjoy some fun activities with your friends, it also provides a good and much needed opportunity to stretch your legs.
The seating arrangement isn’t designed for screen viewing either. TI5 and the Frankfurt Major had a good solution to this issue with a giant cube of screens hanging of the ceiling, but there were still plenty of seats with a bad viewing experience, staring directly onto the edge of two screens. Except for the final day, these seats were largely empty and part of that comes down to Valve adding an elegant solution to this issue - a separate viewing area outside. This only works if the weather plays along, but a viewing area just outside the arena allows for fresh air and a more relaxing alternative and more interactions with other fans or even personalities.
The time commitment for any Esports live spectator is quite a big one and less comparable to a traditional football match, but rather to a convention. Spending around 10 hours a day for 3-5 days just watching games is exhausting and the venue needs to provide an appropriate environment. TI5 and other events have shown that they are taking steps into the right direction, but these smaller issues will remain as long as the actual venues themselves aren't dedicated to these particular events.
Esports studios
Gfinity Arena - a repurposed cinema
Now, there are dedicated Esports facilities out there already. Esports Arena in California and Cyberarena in Kiev are two notable ones, the latter has been home to numerous StarLadder LAN finals in both Dota and CS:GO before. In the East, South Korea has two dedicated factilities in the Nexon Arena and the Yongsan e-Sports Stadium.
Other notable brands and organizations, such as RedBull, HyperX or ESL also have amazing studios that feel professional and refined, allowing for quite a unique experience. They may only allow for less than 100 spectators, but attending events in these studios allows the audience to experience a very intimate atmosphere where you can talk to the players while watching games. It’s an amazing setup, but obviously the big noise is created by big events.
There are some setups that allow for bigger audiences, for example in the range of 600 people across multiple stages with “[...] the comfiest seats found in eSports” according to Gfinity. They have repurposed old parts of a cinema to function as their dedicated Gfinity Arena. It addresses a lot of the issues mentioned above.
However, none of these facilities are big enough to host prestigious, large events. Will we ever have ones that do? Unlikely.
Esports Arenas?
Nexon Stadium in Korea
There have been numerous attempts to build larger, dedicated Esports venues, MLG being the most recent notable organizer to have announced their plans. Only a few projects have been seen through though, and with Activision Blizzard’s acquisition of the brand, it remains to be seen if those plans will continue to be executed or not.
The harsh reality is Esports is not big enough yet to have large, dedicated venues for its own events. In fact, as global as Esports is, dedicated venues isn’t necessarily a good solution. Organizers will want to explore different markets and want to set themselves aside from other events--the Frankfurt Major being in the same city as ESL One Frankfurt felt off and less special. This also led to ESL not hosting another event in Europe until the next ESL One Frankfurt, as Ulrich Schulze told us.
So will we see an Esports stadium anytime soon? Probably not. Can we optimize existing setups still? Definitely. And as mentioned above, organizers are already changing existing setups to find the ideal ones. TI5’s viewing experience was a massive improvement from TI4 and this year’s ESL One Frankfurt could potentially be the best in that regard as well. These aren’t major issues by any means. They don’t tarnish the truly memorable moments--they are just a stain on the otherwise amazing track record of recent tournaments of this scale. The Play will always be the Play and when people look back they won’t remember the bad seats or bad food. They’ll remember the games.
What then?
DreamHack
So if dedicated arenas and stadiums aren't the future for Esports events, what will be? Currently, a lot of tournament organizers are looking to do a lot of stuff that has proven to be successful and add their own little spin to it. They rent an arena, they put up a screen and that's mostly it.
Rarely do big events really differ from the norm -- except for Blizzcon or DreamHack, which, in its Winter and Summer iterations, has multiple Esports stages and titles set up. They are both more of a gaming festival after all. Both Blizzcon and DreamHack are more of an experience, rather than just tournaments. Attending either solely for a particular tournament or two would mean you only experienced half of the actual event.
Could the DreamHack/Blizzcon format work for other events with the focus on one Esports title? Imagine if The International had set up multiple stages and ran more than just one game at the same time. The overall time to host the event could be vastly reduced to a few days instead of a full week. It would add a more casual and dynamic flavor to the atmosphere and experience.
There are of course downsides to this setup and format and from an organizers point of view, it's a big investment -- two broadcasting and production teams would need to work at the same time and two stages and two more booths would need to be set up. Most importantly though, it would split up the crowd and possibly deny fans to watch two of their favorite teams if they play at the same time.
Closing Thoughts
The way things are now, it seems as if tournament organizers are currently trying to one up one another first -- bigger and better venues with better production in order to stay ahead of the game. It would need one organizer to be brave enough to explore a different take, a different approach. ESL did so in 2014 when they hosted the first big Western stadium event for Dota 2 and it was a huge success and almost forced other big events to follow suit. BeyondTheSummit has also shown with its The Summit that the scene, both the professional players as well as the fans, is open to different formats and approaches.
It seems unlikely to see any vastly different or new formats or setups in 2016, as some organizers are just establishing their own arena type events, such as StarLadder or DotaPit. That said, as ever growing and changing this industry is, who knows what 2017 has in store for us.
Image Sources:
sick 11111111111111111
2,017 BibleThump
Isn't it stupid that people don't say anything meaningful for the first few comments, and only say "First?"
Isn't it stupid that people don't say anything meaningful for the first few comments, and only say "Isn't it stupid that people don't say anything meaningful for the first few comments, and only say "First?""
Isn't it stupid that people don't say anything meaningful for the first few comments and only say "Isn't it stupid that people don't say anything meaningful for the first few comments, and only say "Isn't it stupid that people don't say anything meaningful for the first few comments, and only say "First?"
almost every post here starts with "First" or "1111" in this case.
It's a shame that more people don't appreciate these blogs, they're very well written.
Mango Tango Potato Dildo Keepo LepoLepo
Very well written article, but sadly, I would be too far away from any Esport stadium coming soon. Oh vey Dubai so far away
I enjoyed this blog a lot, keep them coming.
Kombank Arena - http://www.kombankarena.rs/scc/page/27/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0+%D1%83+%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BA+%D0%90%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8
Waste of resources in a world that is being stripped and polluted. Look at the indulgence of Brazil and Qatar for the FIFA World Cup. Look at the billion dollar stadiums for American Football and Baseball. Let's not follow. Let's be better than the traditional sports.
i don't think dedicated venues are necessary, they have plenty of opportunities just waiting to be found
Yeah, these comment sections are ridiculous. Maybe just embed a reddit thread below, like when you use AlienTube for YouTube.
To go off of what JimmyJames stated, sports stadiums are already a giant waste of money in nearly all cases. In addition watching eSports live in person is the dumbest thing I have ever heard, you are not watching something like hockey where you really don't get the speed of what is happening w/o being there in person. This is just so stupid it hurts. eSports are fine, eSports arenas are just super stupid.
Just have one multi purpose one.