Inside Esports Stadium Arlington, North America's Largest - and Most Flexible - Esports Venue

Inside Esports Stadium Arlington, North America's Largest - and Most Flexible - Esports Venue The 100,000-sq.-ft. facility is part of an initiative to build a local esports community By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor

Thursday, January 24, 2019 - 8:00 am

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When Esports Stadium Arlington officially opened in November, the $10 million, 100,000-sq.-ft. facility represented the most significant commitment to esports by a municipality to date. Located in the Arlington, TX, Entertainment District, not only is it the largest dedicated esports facility in North America, but it's also an extremely versatile venue, having already hosted events ranging from FACEIT's Esports Championship Series (ECS) Finals to the Collegiate Rocket League National Championship.

The $10 million, 100,000-sq.-ft. Esports Stadium Arlington is the largest esports-focused venue in North America to date.

This is the most flexible and adaptable esports stadium in the world, says Corey Dunn, executive producer, NGAGE Esports, which manages all events at the venue. One of our main goals was to create a space that could bring in many different types of users. The [show] we produce one weekend is probably going to be very different from what we're doing the next weekend. So, from a production standpoint, the biggest difference with what we're doing in our facility compared with other esports or [traditional sports] venues is, we have to take different approaches for almost every event we do.

Experiential Venue: More Than Just a Spot To Watch the Game

However, ES Arlington - which is a joint venture of the city of Arlington and Esports Venues LLC (an arm of Infinite Esports, which is owned by Texas Rangers co-owner/COO Neil Leibman) and was designed by Populous - is much more than an arena to host live esports competitions. Besides a state-of-the-art competition space, it features a Gaming Center with 50-plus gaming stations open to the public seven days a week, as well as retail and social spaces (including food and beverage), premium hospitality offerings, broadcast and production studios, and ultramodern team training facilities.

The reality is that these [esports] fans want to be together for a cultural and social experience, and we're creating the environment to make that possible, says Brian Mirakian, senior principal/director for Activate, Populous. However, they're not there to sit in their seat the entire time; they're there to choose an experiential adventure.

That's where the gaming center comes into play, he continues. You could be at a tournament for eight to 10 hours, but you have the ability to walk out and socialize with your friends and participate in games. There is the ability for you to be able to migrate from place to place, and, ultimately, that's the driving factor behind this project.

Esports Stadium Arlington opened in November hosting FACEIT's Esports Championship Series Finals.

The project to transform an underutilized space at the Arlington Convention Center into an esports-specific venue was completed in just six months. Populous enlisted Shawmut as its construction partner and systems integrator SimplyNew to build out the technology for the venue's media and IT architecture, broadcast studio, and A/V.

I think that the number-one thing that's important for people to realize about this facility is that it's a fully immersive experience - not just a place where you watch a game and leave, which is what most sporting events are, says SimplyNew co-founder Marc Scarpa. This is a fully immersive experiential entertainment center, and it starts the moment you walk in the door of the building.

Inside the Arena: A Fully Immersive Competition Space

The competition arena itself boasts an 85-ft-long LED board and features an immersive, 5.1 surround sound system built on a Dante IP audio network, and a dynamic theatrical lighting system.

To serve the wide variety of competitions expected to be held in Arlington, the main stage can accommodate events ranging from 1 v 1 to 7 v 7 and up to 100 game stations for battle royale competitions. The venue can also host conferences and corporate events outside of esports. Seating can be scaled from 250 to 2,500 spectators.

Dunn, a veteran of the esports scene for more than a decade and one of the industry's most experienced producers/directors of live esports events, is overseeing all production at the facility and sees its flexibility as key to its success.

One of the key things that we have to be cognizant of is knowing how to integrate our local resources into [customers'] ecosystem because every [show] is different, he explains. You've got people that are extremely technical and highly proficient in [esports] production, and then you have others that are still learning. You've got people that need a lot of our resources and others that have every resource and just want to be able to come into the space and load in. We've got to be able to serve both equally well.

FACEIT rolled out a studio set inside Esports Stadium Arlington for its ECS Finals show.

Eight Grass Valley LDX 86N 4K-capable cameras are on hand for in-arena coverage: two handhelds, three long-lens cameras, a jib, and two studio cameras. The long-lens cameras are outfitted with the new Canon UHD-DIGISUPER UJ 66X9B box zoom lenses, the camera manufacturer's first 4K-compatible medium telephoto broadcast lens. Focal length on the telephoto end was a priority for ES Arlington, and it was the first facility in the world to receive the new Canon lenses, which offer 66X magnification and the operability of a 2/3-in. HD field lens along with telephoto-end focal length of 600mm (1,200mm when using the built-in 2X extender).

On stage, up to a dozen Blackmagic Design play

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2019/01/24/inside-esports-stadium-arlingto...
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