Esports: AV’s Newest Frontier INPUT
By Dan Daley for AVIXAT
he new arena is everything a sports
fan could hope for: raked, stadium-
style seating overlooking a field of
play where the action is displayed
on huge LED video screens that
stretch 50 ft. wide and 20 ft. tall. If
fans don’t grab a beer or burger on the way in,
they can get them at several restaurants and
premium suites that ring the arena’s concourses.
The music is loud and bass-driven, pumped
through a PA system that otherwise might have
been installed in a concert hall. But when the
“players” take the “field,” it quickly becomes ap-
parent that this is no conventional sports venue;
rather, the 30,000-sq.-ft., multilevel Esports
Arena Las Vegas is the newest frontier for how
AV technology is helping keep sports at the top
of the live event production industry.Video games are a massive business. Total con-
sumer spending reached $36 billion in 2017,
representing an 18 per cent increase from 2016.
But their evolution into competitive “esports”- played live in front of an audience – has the
potential to grow that category further and
faster. Esports reached $325 million in revenues
in 2015, according to the “Newzoo 2016 Global
Esports Market Report,” and should reach $
billion this year – one year before it could be
eligible to become an Olympic sport, as the
Wall Street Journal has speculated...
Esports competitions have traditional
sporting events looking over their collective
shoulder as the purses grow larger. For instance,
the International 2017, a Dota 2 competitive-
gaming event, drew an audience of 5 million
concurrent viewers and had a total purse of
$24.6 million — $10.8 million of which went to
the winning team.
The sports industry is taking note, and pro
AV has a big role to play in the evolving experi-
ence of esports.
A Different World
Esports venues are likely to be different experi-
ences than traditional sports venues because
esports fans are different from traditional sports
fans. The Association of Luxury Suite Directors,
which focuses on the premium seat industry instadiums and arenas throughout
North America, has identified this
cohort: They are younger than
traditional stick-and-ball sports
fans, with an average age in the
mid-20s versus, for instance, 50 for
the average NFL fan. They may be
millennials, but they’re relatively
affluent ones. And they’ve been
brought up on video games
played at home and online, not
as fans in the stands.
That, says Max Snyder, Director
of Sponsorship at the ALSD, has
implications for audiovisual expe-
riences. For starters, fans will be
able to be much closer to the action, because
there are no balls or pucks flying around, which
means video screens will not only be larger,
but also lower and closer to the seating areas.
“Flexibility of the AV will also be important,”
Snyder explains. “For instance, being able to
reposition video screens as the types of games
change. Even down to the digital signage – the
menus and food service for esports venues are
different: They’ll have sushi while the [conven-
tional] venues serve hot dogs. Everything will
be digital in these venues.”
But getting the next generation of sports
fans, who may have been put off by the high
cost of tickets to live games, into the venue
in the first place is critical. AV can help there,
too, providing fans with the kind of media
environment they’re used to from home
video games. The Las Vegas Review-Journal
reports video games are analogous to the slot
machines that Vegas casinos depend on, and
the city is hoping live video gaming can help
replace the aging boomer demographic they
previously relied on.
In fact, esports venues may draw as much
from AV’s hospitality sector as from its traditional
sports-venue categories. For instance, MGM
Resorts International and the Luxor Hotel and
Casino are partners in the Esports Arena Las
Vegas and Allied Esports, the gaming industry’s
largest network of dedicated esports venues
and content-production facilities. Allied Es-
ports has an online network of 400 million fans
worldwide who can log on from computers and
devices to watch or participate in tournaments
and events at any of its venues.The New Landscape of Sports Venues
The esports venue will share some basic simi-
larities with its analog-sports cousins: seating
will surround a field where the action will take
place, much of it projected through large video
screens with announcements and an LFE-heavy
underscore pumped through high-SPL sound
systems, with concessions in a surrounding
concourse and premium-seat accommoda-
tions available.
The resemblance ends there. Instead of
simply replaying the action, the massive videoinfrastructure of esports venues will be the
field of play, projecting larger representations
of what the competitors are doing on their
own screens. With sports that exist in a virtual
domain, those displays can be configured in
ways unimaginable for conventional sports
venues, including enclosing the spaces to adapt
to different types of games and levels of view-
ing, some of which will allow the spectators to
participate to varying extents.
Populous, a global architecture firm be-
hind many pro sports facilities, predicts an al-
most Blade Runner-like landscape of immersive
esports venues that can shape-shift as needed.Integrators Weigh In
Esports may eventually grow into a unique
vertical with its own technical requirements for
audiovisual systems integrators and designers,
but it will still rely on the basics of AV integration.
“The kinds of video switching that will
need to take place will be specific to electronic
gaming, and specific to whether the venue is
for thousands of spectators watching a handful
of players or for many participants in big, mul-
tiplayer games,” says Frank McCann, President
of McCann Systems. “But you’re still building
an LED video wall the same as you would in
another kind of venue. The basics of what we
do as AV professionals are still there.”
McCann, whose company has a large
portfolio of sports books, says the emerging
category of competitive esports venues will
take cues from that AV category, but it will also
share characteristics with conventional sports
venues and broadcasts. He cites how headset
audio from video gamers is analogous to the
in-car driver/pit-crew strategizing heard in
televised NASCAR races.
But sports and live events venues versus
esports venues needn’t be an either/or proposi-
tion. McCann points to the MSG Sphere Arena,
a 360-ft. round dome completely covered
inside and out by programmable, wrap-around
LED screens, with a 170,000-sq.-ft., 19,000 x
3,500-pixel main display, nearing completion in
Las Vegas. The venue, a joint venture between
Madison Square Garden and music mogul Ir-
ving Azoff, establishes a new level of immersive
live event spaces, says McCann – one in which
the virtual aspects of video gaming intersect
with modern sports venues whose designs rely
heavily on the technology of AV.
“This,” says McCann, “is where it’s all headed.”AVIXA is the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience
Association, producer of InfoComm trade shows
around the world, co-owner of Integrated Systems
Europe, and the international trade association
representing the audiovisual industry.
This article is one of many informative and
insightful reports, case studies, and white papers
available from the “Insight” section of AVIXA’s
website at http://www.avixa.org/insight.HYPERX ESPORTS ARENA LAS VEGAS