Beijing’s famed Crow’s Nest stadium was the host of the opening ceremony for the 2008 Olympics. Last year, the stadium hosted another opening ceremony, this time for League of Legends Worlds.
Two billion people watched the 2008 opening ceremony, complete with the usual dancers, fireworks, and torch lighting. The broadcast also featured a computer-generated sequence of glowing footprints that crossed the sky from Tiananmen Square to the stadium. While LoL’s opening ceremony didn’t draw quite as many viewers, it upped the ante, replacing simple footprints with an augmented reality dragon, winning developer Riot Games the first Sports Emmy in an esports event.
But though the overall concept of the two opening ceremonies was similar, the requirements for hosting an esports event are very different from that for traditional sports. Most traditional sports events take place in dedicated venues designed with a specific sport in mind. In esports, events have often taken place in a traditional sports arena that has been retrofitted for esports.
Many arenas have turned to IBM for help with that transition. “Esports came naturally [to IBM] because we were working with game companies already,” said Bill Le Voir-Barry, the CTO for IBM Esports. “Our cloud was designed by gamers. Ninety percent of developers around the world are gamers in some fashion.”
In traditional sports arenas, fans clamor for solid Wi-Fi, but in esports, the network is literally the playing field. While IBM helps build networks for temporary events, dedicated esports arenas built around that playing field are beginning to emerge. The Esports Stadium Arlington, which will hold its first event in November, is one such example.
“[Playing with a bad network] would be like playing basketball underwater,” said Jonathon Oudthone, the founder of NGAGE Esports and esports project lead for the Esports Stadium Arlington. “That’s a term in esports, playing underwater. With high ping or low bandwidth connectivity, your response time is dramatically decreased.”
The network at the Esports Stadium Arlington is truly impressive. The arena is outfitted with a one-gigabyte dedicated symmetric line that can be split into two 500-megabyte lines. (“Symmetric” means the download and upload speeds are the same.) The network can be expanded out to a massive five gigabytes if necessary.
That may sound like overkill but with the burgeoning competitive scene around battle royale titles, esports networks need to be bigger than ever. Games like Fortnite and PUBG can have as many as 100 players competing in the same virtual arena at the same time. In Epic Games’ Fortnite Summer Skirmish Series this year, the first week had to be cut short because of the lag in the network experienced by players.
“People may not realize how much horsepower it takes to run [an esports event],” Le Voir-Barry said. “We can get clouds set up quickly for stadiums and temporary events like Dreamhacks and ESLs.”
Dreamhacks and ESLs are home to some of the largest esports events in the world. They are third-party events separate from the developers and were the main way esports were showcased for years. Lately, there has been a transition to developer-supported franchised leagues. With those franchises come more arenas dedicated solely to esports. Blizzard’s Arena in Burbank has been the home of almost all Overwatch League events—this summer’s Grand Finals were played at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn—but the plan is for teams to eventually play in their home city. That will require a new crop of esports arenas.
The Houston Outlaws are one such team looking for a new arena. NGAGE will be working on that stadium as well.
“We are setting the standards for what a dedicated esports facility will look like in the future,” Oudthone said.
The network isn’t the only unique aspect of Esports Stadium Arlington. In traditional sports arenas, the closer a spectator is to the field or court, the better the seat is. In esports the vast majority of tickets are general admission and often the first place to fill up is right around the concourse entrances.
“The venue itself is quite a bit different,” said Brian Mirakian, director of Populous Activate and design project lead for Esports Stadium Arlington. “Normally when you think of the valuable seats, you think of Jack Nicholson in the Staples Center. [In esports] what you see is that people would rather gravitate to positions in the back of the bowl because they have better sight lines to the screen. It’s similar to how seating works in a movie theatre.”
In addition, esports events follow a much different structure than traditional sports. They often run for multiple days or even weeks. They resemble golf tournaments more than basketball games. That means the arenas need to keep people engaged for a lot longer and during times when their favorite team isn’t playing.
“When you are taking in an NBA or NHL event, there is a structured time frame. You know how many quarters and about how much time it will take,” Mirakian explained. “[In esports] you’re talking about a longer duration for a non-specific period of time. It poses a different demand for a venue. You need to be able to provide the types of experiential amenities for fans to gather and socialize during the event.”