Frisco has been called “Sports City U.S.A.” because of the plethora of professional sports teams headquartered in the city, including the Dallas Cowboys, FC Dallas and the Dallas Stars. Now part of that ensemble includes competitive video gaming, otherwise known as esports.
“Esports, what it boils down to, is a digital sport,” Complexity Gaming CEO Jason Lake said. “So when I talk to people [who are older] about esports, they’re quite often perplexed. But look at the internet and how it has changed everything we do. We have a supercomputer in our pocket that allows you to talk to someone around the world and see their face. We are living in the time of ‘Star Trek’ already.”
Last fall Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and real estate investor John Goff acquired a stake in Complexity Gaming, a professional American esports organization. The esports company is currently located in an office park in Frisco and will build its headquarters at The Star in Frisco.
Infinite Esports & Entertainment is a Frisco startup backed by Texas Rangers co-owner Neil Leibman and founded by Chris Chaney. Last fall, Infinite also acquired a major stake in OpTic Gaming, another professional American esports organization. Both companies are operating out of Frisco.
Esports has arrived in Frisco, but the video gaming industry has had a presence in the city for several years. In 2015, Gearbox Software, a major video game developer known for games such as “Halo” and “Borderlands,” moved its headquarters from Plano to Frisco Square. In 2016 the National Videogame Museum opened in Frisco.
The rise of esports in mainstream media and in Frisco brings the potential for more gaming events being
held in Frisco, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford said.
Pitchford has already assembled an esports event team, and plans are to create esports events and tournaments that would bring the world’s best gamers and their fans to Frisco.
Esports industry
The esports industry has gained popularity in recent years, but competitive gaming has been around
as long as video games themselves, Lake said.
Founded in 2003, Complexity is one of the oldest esports organizations in North America and western Europe, Lake said. The organization will be celebrating its 15th anniversary this summer.
Lake had recently graduated from law school when he came upon a video game called “Counter-Strike,” a multiplayer, first-person shooter game.
“I came from a football background, but I also loved playing video games growing up,” Lake said. “When I realized people were playing as part of a team online and going to events together, I saw the perfect intersection of competition between sports and video games. It was a light bulb moment.”
According to Lake, the way esports organizations operate is similar to a university.
“The best way to look at a multigaming esports organization like ours is that we’re more like the University of Texas than we are the Dallas Cowboys,” Lake said.
Lake said that while the Dallas Cowboys’ main focus is football, the University of Texas has several teams playing different sports, such as football, baseball, basketball and lacrosse. Complexity, for example, does not have just one team but several teams playing different games in different competitions.
The games played by esports teams include “League of Legends,” “Dota 2” and “Hearthstone,” among others. The number of players on teams can range from four to eight, and each team has its own coach and manager.
The teams include professional gamers that can range in age from 16 to 26 and are mostly male. Lake, however, said as esports continues to gain more popularity, the age range could increase, and more female gamers could get involved.
Professional gamers are paid, but the average salary is difficult to pinpoint, according to market research firm Newszoo.
“[Salary] very much depends on the game they play professionally and at what level,” Newszoo’s Head of Esports Jurre Pannekeet said. “This even holds for the top games, where professionals in ‘Dota 2’ are more dependent on prize money winnings than in ‘League of Legends,’ where they have a higher base salary.”
Player earnings can range anywhere from $20,000 to six-figure salaries, according to competitive gaming resource website e-Sports Earnings. The top players in the industry can earn more than $1 million per year.
Frisco impact
When esports organizations started making Frisco home, Visit Frisco Executive Director Marla Roe and Director of Sports & Events Josh Dill started to research the potential impact of the industry.
Roe and Dill said based on the gaming and esports industry events, they see esports having some impact, but not as significant as other sporting events held in Frisco.
“The way we would approach [esports] is very different than what we would do for traditional sports,” Dill said. “You pretty much know that a baseball tournament of 150 teams is going to bring an “x” number of players and their [families]. Esports is not that way. Even if you say you’re going to do this [specific esports] event over these dates, sometimes it makes, and sometimes it doesn’t. Organizers that we’ve spoken to say that [esports] hasn’t realized its own potential yet.”
Chris Johnson, an economic analyst with Economic Analytics Consulting in Houston, said esports can generate economic impact in two ways.
“[Esports] can generate spending by tourism, or it can generate impact by building and developing the industry of the businesses that participate and promote the industry itself, which is what we’re seeing [in Frisco],” Johnson said.
Pitchford said the esports events team has already run several test events at Dr Pepper Arena to test the concept. The next step would be to create a large esports event that would bring the greatest competitors in the world to Frisco and their fans, he said.
“Traditionally [Gearbox has] made the games, but now we’re also trying to get into the world where we create this spectacle of the live spectator event,” Pitchford said.
Johnson said the biggest value from these type of events is the exposure to the city, even if it does not translate to economic impact to the city now.
The 2018 Super Bowl was viewed by an estimated 103.4 million viewers, according to The Neilsen Co., an analytics company. By comparison, more than 360 million global viewers watched the 2017 “League of Legends” mid-season invitational, according to the end-of-the-year numbers on the official “League of Legends” esports website.
Given this online global viewership, Johnson said he expects more eyes to be on Frisco because of esports. An esports tournament may only bring a certain number of people to the event, but the amount of people watching the event live through streaming services will be huge, he said.
Roe said as esports continues to grow, these types of events will draw in a different demographic to Frisco.
“[Esports] is such a buzz right now, and from a media perspective having these [organizations] here in Frisco is drawing a younger crowd to Frisco,” Roe said.
