Inside world’s first purpose-built e-sports stadium, in China – Hong Kong architect Barrie Ho explains his design
Arena in Chongqing, western China, that opened in December has curtain glass walls lined by transparent LED screens that turn the entire building into an enormous video display for those unable to get a seat inside
A new stadium has risen on a bank of the Yangtze River in southwestern China’s Chongqing municipality, but inside you won’t find basketball players, footballers or swimmers. Instead? Video gamers.
This is the world’s first purpose-built e-sports stadium – and it was designed by Hong Kong architect Barrie Ho.
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“The number of people watching e-sports online is higher than the number watching the NBA,” says Ho, whose firm designed Chongqing’s Zhongxian E-Sports Stadium, phase one of which was completed at the end of last year. “Everybody thinks e-sports is about two people playing a game online. It’s not like that. It’s like a carnival.”
It’s even more than that: it’s a phenomenon. Market tracking company Newzoo projects that 427 million people will be watching competitive video gaming next year. Last year’s most-watched e-sports event, the Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice, Poland, drew 46 million viewers. E-sports are even being considered for inclusion in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Stadiums around the world are already being used for massive e-sport events. In 2014, more than 45,000 fans crowded into Seoul’s World Cup Stadium to watch the League of Legends World Championship. Last summer, each of the nearly 20,000 seats in Toronto’s Air Canada Centre were sold out for three days of competitions.
Video game company Blizzard Entertainment has already opened dedicated e-sports halls in Taipei and Los Angeles. But the 60,000-square-foot Zhongxian stadium, which is slated to be fully completed by the middle of this year, is the first fully fledged stadium dedicated entirely to professional video gaming.