Arlington, Texas, Releases Details of New eSports Stadium

Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, announced its live video production solutions will power the innovative Esports Stadium Arlington, North America’s largest premier eSports stadium. Grass Valley’s solutions will provide professional grade broadcast production, delivering live gameplay and competition action to audiences around the globe via online channels, such as Twitch and YouTube.

Investing in the rapidly growing eSports market, which is expected to generate global revenues of $1.65 billion by 2020 the state-of-the-art Esports Stadium in Arlington opens at the end of the year in the city’s redeveloped Convention Center. Created in collaboration with Esports Venues LLC, NGAGE Esports and Populous, the $10-million, 100,000-square-foot space will be the largest and most flexible dedicated eSports stadium in the country, hosting premier, high-action ‘experiential’ events for thousands of fans each year from leading gaming companies.

“As the largest premier venue for eSports competition, training, broadcast, content creation and retail in North America, we designed Esports Stadium Arlington to be both dynamic and flexible enough to meet the requirements of a wide range of event formats – scaling to hold an audience of 250 to 2,500,” commented Brian Mirakian, senior principal at Populous. “It will offer an unrivaled experience for competitors and spectators alike, and sets a high watermark and new paradigm for eSports venues globally. It was critical that the broadcast technology deliver the quality and flexibility to match, meeting the benchmarks that premier gaming events of any size demand.”

With Grass Valley’s cameras, ultrafast LiveTouch replay and highlights solution, flexible Karrera K-Frame S-series 3M/E production switcher and the scalable Densité and enterprise-class NVISION 8280 routing solutions at the heart of the new infrastructure, the production team will be able to deliver stunning, broadcast quality images of live gameplay to fans, both at the stadium and around the globe. Grass Valley’s scalable, flexible solutions give the production infrastructure agility to be quickly reconfigured to meet the requirements of different event formats, ensuring fast turnaround between events. Eight Grass Valley LDX C86^N cameras will be positioned around the stadium to capture the live action, which will be streamed live to online platforms, large screens around the venue, and to apps that will connect the fan community before they enter the stadium.

Marc Scarpa, Founder of Simplynew, the system integrator for the project, commented,“Choosing Grass Valley was a business decision as much as it was a technology decision. There is no other market leader that could have executed at this level with us. They are undeniably a key player in the success of this project.”

“The growing eSports market presents enormous potential for venues and content producers to deliver high quality viewing experiences to one of the fastest growing fan bases in the world,” said Kyle Luther, vice president sales, North America, Grass Valley. “We are very proud that our solutions have been chosen for such an innovative project as Esports Stadium Arlington, which perfectly positions Grass Valley as the go-to partner for eSports. With the need for flexibility, we are able to leverage our vast experience in broadcast and live production to help customers meet fans’ demands for an as-live experience, wherever they are in the world.”

eSports was a major feature at the Grass Valley booth this year at IBC (Hall 9.A01), where an exclusive gaming area was set up to deliver the live eSports viewing experience.