The world’s largest e-sports arena is being built in Shanghai. At the beginning of the week the foundation stone for the “Shanghai International New Cultural and Creative E-Sports Center” was laid. China is one of the largest markets for esports.
The arena is expected to be completed by 2023 and to open the following year. In the first construction phase, it will cost the equivalent of almost 630 million euros. The Chinese SuperGen Group, the main investor and parent company of the e-sports team Edward Gaming, puts the total investment at over 1.2 billion euros.
The e-sports facility in Shanghai will not only have an arena with a spectator capacity of 6,000 people, but also a “futuristic” 5-star hotel with e-sports themes as well as indoor leisure activities on an area of around 500,000 square meters -Skydiving and deep diving pools offer. Overall, the complex should be designed for 10,000 visitors.
–
–
–
E-sports, competitive gaming on the computer or mobile device, is gaining popularity, among other things, due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, public esports events were mostly canceled in 2020, and the construction of several esports arenas was stopped or delayed.
Trend towards own buildings
E-sports events have so far mainly taken place in football stadiums or in multi-purpose halls such as the Lanxess Arena in Cologne, which is usually used for ice hockey, handball, basketball and concerts. There are also specialized esports arenas, including the Esports Stadium Arlington in Texas or the HyperX Esports Arena in the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. Both opened in 2018.
In addition, a new stadium in the US city of Philadelphia was planned for this year, the Fusion Arena. In terms of both audience capacity and usable space, they are all significantly smaller than the building project now being tackled in Shanghai.
(fds)
– .
