English Premier League soccer club Tottenham are hoping to earn up to $3 million per event at their new stadium by staging esports tournaments.
Spurs, who will play their home games at Wembly next season before moving into their new stadium in 2019 want to use their new stadium for events other than football including NFL and esports.
Spurs’ executive director Donna-Maria Cullen confirmed that the club want to bring a wide range of events to their new $800m stadium.
The club are hoping to jump onto the success of esports and will anticipate that the New White Hart Lane will become the go-to venue for esports in the UK.
For those of you who don’t know, esports are competitive video-gaming. Esports already massive in North America and Asia, especially. Spurs are hoping to be at the front of the queue for when the craze properly hits the UK.
Esports tournaments in America and Asia regularly host sell-out crowds that number crowds seen at Premier League football matches. Indeed, America and South Korea have even built stadiums dedicated specifically to esports.
Popular esports include fantasy games such as League of Legends (LoL) and DOTA 2 as well as shooting games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO).
One esport which Tottenham will no doubt be intending to help become more popular is FIFA football. Over the past few years Premier League football teams have recruited professional FIFA esports athletes to represent their respective clubs in esports tournaments in an effort to grow their own fan bases.
Premier League clubs are basing their investment partly in the hope that regular watchers of Premier League football will be attracted to watching football esports tournaments and vice versa. In a similar way to regular football, audiences of esports tournaments are able to bet on the outcome of esports matches. It will be interesting to see whether this makes esports more or less exciting to watch for the fans.
The fan base of EA Sports game FIFA 17 is growing month after month. The game is expected to break into the top 10 of most watched esports by 2018 at the latest whilst many believe that EAs next installment in the FIFA franchise – FIFA 18 – will be its best creation yet.