Lights were flashing and last Friday morning, was an exciting day for any eSports avid fan. Hordes of young men and a few women conversed eagerly as they gathered around outside a building in downtown Las Vegas’ Neonopolis. As the doors opened, they flooded inside a shadowy room with blinking LED lights and set up their video-gaming gear at cafeteria-style counters.
Participants donned headsets as the got to contend in the North American Halo World Championship Qualifier inside what has been named “thE Arena,” the newest and most advanced gaming arena in the West.
The 15,000 square-foot area is the first of its kind in Nevada, according to Alex Igelman, who is the CEO of Millennial Esports, the company behind thE Arena. “A lot of the events have been taking place in convention spaces at hotels or just some arenas that they convert, like at the MGM,” Igelman said. “What we have is a purpose-built arena”, said Igelman
Scheduled for year-round activity
While he wouldn’t reveal the full calendar, Igelman intends on keeping the arena filled year-round by holding teams for training and even business events or talks. “The is sky the limit in terms of what we can do,” he articulated.
He continued explaining that the venue was a “multi-million dollar” venture. eSports is a fast-growing market, encompassing specialised gamers, often part of teams, who participate frequently for financial prizes.
“It really wasn’t until the rise of Twitch streaming that competitive video gaming took on a life of its own,” said Igelman.
Twitch.tv lets gamers to live stream their games and view other gamers compete for free. Millennial Esports, Igelman’s establishment is an overtly traded Toronto-based company valued at $11.4 million, according to Bloomberg.
Igelman deems that the Neonopolis space is compact enough to make it cosy, yet offers high quality sound, lighting and gaming stations. “It’s probably the only one of this kind with the proper theater and proper arena,” he stated, noting that larger stadiums aren’t automatically better.
“The bulk of the viewership is taking place online,” he notes. “We accommodate just enough people to have a nice audience,” which is merely below 1,200 persons.
Movie-theater themed area
Inside the focal hall, gamers prepare around long tables. Outside and down a hallway is the arena, a room with a movie-theater theme with a capacity of over 200 seats.
The spectators face the stage, which covers eight player stations with lush gaming chairs and consoles. “Most of these guys are between the ages of 19-25,” Igelman expressed, even though few women also compete.
Igelman equates watching competitive video-gaming to attending other sporting events. “It’s no different from going to an NFL game or a WWE event,” he said, “At this level, these are athletes,” Igelman asserted. Tom “TSquared” Taylor was one of such sportspersons. Taylor started gaming expertly at the tender age of 14, winning the 2008 Halo World Championship with his crew, Str8 Rippin. Now 29, he stepped down from professional gaming after what he dubbed a “dive around Halo 4” in 2011.
“There was not a lot of organization,” according to Taylor. “There were a lot of politics behind the scenes, and it wasn’t as competitive as it used to be.”
Igelman said the market was cultivated first in Asia and Europe, and began expanding in North America around three years ago. “It really is mind-boggling,” Igelman said laughingly.
More than a billion dollars
Director of research for the International Gaming Institute at UNLV Brett Abarbanel, likens the growth of the esports sector to that of online betting.
“It’s going through tremendous growth right now,” Abarbanel said. “The market itself will go over a billion dollars, definitely by 2020.”
Abarbanel alleged a few factors could hamper development in the market, like the introduction of bookmaking. “It’s such a nascent industry that organizations may struggle with ensuring that nobody’s cheating,” she said.
Players who compete look at it as a specialized sport. Taylor is still deeply involved in the realm of online gaming. He is also the proprietor of Str8 Rippin, the team he competed with for several years, and produces content under that brand.
“This is my type of lifestyle,” Taylor expressed. “I like being able to create my own schedule and entrepreneurship excites me.” Taylor believes Igelman hit the bonanza when he picked thE Arena’s site.
“There’s a huge market for it because Las Vegas just feels like a gamer’s paradise,” he held, mentioning an indispensable gamer’s request. “There’s always 24-hour food.”
Betting with eSports called a balance
Staking with eSports, as with any sport, is a balance, according to Karl Bennison who is the chief of the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s enforcement division: “We certainly don’t want the fact that we allow wagering to impact the integrity of the event,” he said. “And we want to make sure the event is run in a way that doesn’t impact the wagering.”
The Control Board in Nevada reviews sportsbooks’ needs gambling on eSports on a case-by-case base, Bennison supposed. To date, they have only accepted betting for two events, one of which was last month’s DreamHack Masters.
There isn’t an exclusive governing body over all eSports. Yet Bennison has faith in that, with time, a norm will progress. “It’s not like NFL,” Bennison explained. “As the sport evolves, then we would get to the comfort level we have with any professional sport.”
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