2016 ESL OneManila (Photo by Helena Kristianson)
The growth of live esports events in venues just hit another level this month as AEG announced its joint venture with ESL, which will lead to eight to 10 major gaming events in AEG venues in 2017.
The first manifestation of the new alliance will be ESL One New York at Barclays Center, Brooklyn, an event ESL moved from Madison Square Garden Theatre, New York, and for which Steve Roberts, North American Chairman of ESL, expects attendance to double to more than 10,000.
Roberts also plans to add new elements to the experience, including a musical performance, a first for an ESL event, by Krewella, performing between the semi finals and finals.
The astounding growth a gaming as a venue booking, particularly in the past three years, is a found event for all-size venues and one that is expected to join the ranks of concerts, sports and family shows in the business of making memories. To that end, Jon Petrunak, Live Nation, has organized a breakout session for the International Entertainment Buyers Association called Esports: Game On, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 10-11 a.m., at the conference in Nashville. Panelists are to be Tobias Sherman, IMG eSports; Peter Melican, Major League Gaming; and Bredan Buckley, Columbus (Ohio) Arenas Sports & Entertainment.
This fall, probably before IEBA, ESL and the PAC-12 will announce details of yet another manifestation of the growth of esports. Roberts said. “The PAC-12 conference esports league will be the first formal esports in a college conference. It will be treated like any other sport in the PAC-12 schools. This fall, there will be tryouts for specific games and league play will begin in 2017. We’re partners with PAC-12 in executing the overall league.” While competition will mostly be in dorms, played online, it will soon reach the status of an arena event on campus, Roberts predicted.
Mandalay Bay Events Center, Las Vegas, hosted the League of Legends Spring Finals April 16-17. Attendance was over 10,000 for the event produced by Riot Games.
Darren Davis, VP of entertainment, Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, said, “they underestimated the age of the crowd, assuming they were all under 21. “In reality, over 50 percent of the crowd was of legal gaming/drinking age and we saw good per caps and some uptick in other areas of our operations beyond the event itself.”
By the time Mandalay Bay hosted its next esports event, EVO 2016 World Finals July 17, they had learned to bolster it with additional club and casino events. EVO 2016 sold out the arena, with 10,500 on hand, Davis said.
“This event was the #1 trending item on Twitter that day. We broadcast live on ESPN2 for two hours. ESPN hosted over 18 hours of esports programming that day from all over the globe,” Davis said.
Operationally, esports requires three to four days of setup and runs all day, 10-15 hours, and sometimes multiple days. The group tends to stay inside the arena most of the time, consuming food and drink on fair or theme park levels due to length of stay. “Our concessionaire said it was the highest food sales event in the building’s history,” Davis said of EVO 2016.
Some esports events involve individual competition and some involve teams. All are like any sport followed by millions who relate to the skill and level of competition involved.
Chuck Steedman, COO, AEG Facilities, said AEG will have hosted, by the end of October, three world championship finals for Riot Games’ League of Legends, two at Staples Center, Los Angeles, and one at Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin. He estimated AEG facilities have hosted 8-10 events total over the past three years, with the first major event in 2013.
ESL One at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Oct. 1-2, featuring Counterstrike Global Offensive, a first person shooter game, and Streetfighter, a fighting game, will be the first under the AEG/ESL pact.
The deal with ESL is not an exclusive, Steedman said. The essence of the deal is that where ESL has existing events they are able to move, they will look to work with AEG and move to AEG venues, which is the case in Brooklyn.
“The second part of it is that where we can work together to create new events, we will do that at AEG Facilities around the world,” Steedman said. It is a joint venture, involving ticketing, marketing, co-promoting and selling global partnerships. AEG is at risk. They are currently planning for 2017 and Steedman expected they will host four to six events under this pact in year one.
Michael Roth, AEG VP of communications, compared it to the deal AEG has with USA Gymnastics, where they are co-producing a 38-city tour.
Operationally, “the building of the event is amazingly complex technologically, because of the bandwidth needed,” Steedman said. “They run on an online platform and also stream to a tremendous worldwide audience. It’s mind-blowing. It’s Super Bowl-esque from a viewer perspective. You have to have an extremely robust dataflow into and out of the building.”
Building of the stages is also complex. “It’s tremendously immersive fan presentation. Fans are watching on multiple, massive video boards with sound and light. It’s usually a 360 perspective with a lot of sound and video in the process,” Steedman added.
Roberts saw 113,000 people attending a three-day event four years ago at the Katowice (Poland) World Championship at Spodek Arena and Convention Center. It was an Intel Extreme Masters event, one of five cities played. Attendance is a combination of paid and free. Ticket prices range from $300-$400 for the weekend for VIPs to $35-$50 for individuals.
In New York, besides music, ESL and AEG will have sponsor activations from athlete and player signings as fan engagement to different types of interactive exhibits on technology.
A key to understanding esports is to know it is a global sport. ESL has five studios around the world that act as hubs – the largest in Los Angeles, with four more in Cologne, outside of London, Sydney and Sao Paolo. “We have 17 offices in Asia and around the world,” Roberts added.
ESL produces 20,000 hours of live esports content, including content coming out of big arena events to studio events that happen on a weekly basis. It is distributed digitally on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube and on linear TV.
There are tens of millions of game enthusiasts, Roberts noted. “What’s interesting is that I’m one of the older guys in the company. My dad used to bring me to ballgames. Now we’re seeing the first generation of gamers becoming dads and starting to bring their kids to our events as my dad brought me to a ballgame.”
This will give esports the critical mass it needs to grow the live event. Today, the demographic is heavily male, 18-34, and highly concentrated in the 18-25 area, Roberts said.
The majority of esports revenue is from live events. “They like to watch it live, just like NFL football,” Roberts said. “You can’t script live sports. It’s all about the drama, storytelling and expertise in gaming.”
Interviewed for this story: Steven Roberts, (415) 378-4437; Darren Davis, (702) 632-7551; Chuck Steedman and Michael Roth, (213) 742-7155; Jon Petrunak, (610) 784-5428