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Overwatch League Grand Finals brought 11,000 mostly booming fans to Brooklyn
This is amazing 11,000 paid attendees watching at video game match https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2018/07/27/overwatch-league-grand-finals-brought-11000-mostly-booming-fans-to-brooklyn/?utm_term=.104295ccb4d4
There had been trepidation in scheduling the championship at Barclays Center because, until now, all the teams had played the entire season in the 450-seat Blizzard Arena in Burbank, Calif. Could they really sell 20,000 tickets in New York, what one executive called “the capital of the universe?”
The crowd, announced as 11,000, might not have reached the desired number but their volume helped bridge the discrepancy. Spray-painted sidewalks alerted the unknowing that the Big Apple was at esports’ epicenter. Fans from Staten Island and California and Canada and South Korea flocked to Barclays. Jerseys in dark blue and light blue and orange and green dotted the streets and subway cars. For a 7 p.m. start, fans lined up at the door at about 2:30.
The crowd, announced as 11,000, might not have reached the desired number but their volume helped bridge the discrepancy. Spray-painted sidewalks alerted the unknowing that the Big Apple was at esports’ epicenter. Fans from Staten Island and California and Canada and South Korea flocked to Barclays. Jerseys in dark blue and light blue and orange and green dotted the streets and subway cars. For a 7 p.m. start, fans lined up at the door at about 2:30.
8 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
When did video gaming become a sporting event? 
This project is going to be amazing https://www.forbes.com/sites/leeigel/2018/03/14/arlington-texas-announces-plans-to-build-largest-esports-stadium-in-u-s/#7fbf0f024131
Arlington, Texas, has announced plans for a 100,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art esports stadium that is scheduled to open later this year. The space will be the largest of its kind in the United States. Its design and location are oriented toward attracting competitive players, fans, and tourists from around the world.
The project is a collaboration between the city, architecture firm Populous, Esports Venues, and NGAGE Esports. On the surface, aspects of it will include the touch points that most people have come to expect of traditional major league sports facilities—space for competitive events, team training rooms and broadcast studios, retail and social outlets, and VIP hospitality areas. But the approach to developing this space in Arlington is focused on more than simply taking knowledge of what works in existing venues and wrapping it in the flags of Dota 2, League of Legends, Counter-Strike, NBA 2K, and all things esports.
On its face, the project will be transforming space at the Arlington Convention Center into something new and different, adaptive and reusable. Renovation and equipment investments are set to be repaid through lease payments, event receipts, stadium naming rights deals and other revenue-generating opportunities that emerge as esports grow in the coming years. Underneath and beyond that, though, is attention to objectives that have been showing real success in Arlington and nearby towns such as Frisco and Plano: improving quality of life is a means to improving economic opportunities and organizing partnerships for economic performance that feeds social pursuits.
It is not for nothing that the esports venue will exist in the heart of Arlington's Entertainment District, which itself sits in the middle of the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex and 10 miles from the world's third busiest airport. The district counts the Dallas Cowboys' home at AT&T Stadium, Texas Rangers' home at Globe Life Park, Texas Live! mixed-use venues, and Six Flags Over Texas theme park among the retail, hotel, restaurant, entertainment, and business operations within walking distance. More options are a short drive away—and so is the University of Texas at Arlington, which is home to the WNBA Dallas Wings and has an esports team that went 29-0 along the way to winning the 2017 Blizzard Entertainment Heroes of the Dorm National Championship.