E-Sports Arena Primed For Opener

Las Vegas is set to run to the forefront of the emerging North American e-sports circuit, with a facility dedicated to hosting and broadcasting competitions slated to open March 3.

– Neonopolis
on Fremont Street

The Neonopolis entertainment complex, located in downtown Vegas next to The Fremont Experience, will host a 15,000-square-foot “e-sports arena” with 200 stadium-style seats for competitions and a 500-capacity main room with a stage, green room and VIP room.

The project is one of Millennial Esports, a Canadian company headed by CEO Alex Igelman.

“As soon as I got into this industry, I knew I wanted to be in Las Vegas and specifically in downtown Las Vegas,” Igelman told the Las Vegas Sun. “The demographic and everything about downtown fits perfectly with e-sports.”

In addition to competitions, the venue will accommodate walk-in visitors who want to stream their content or just play video games 24 hours a day.

The first scheduled event is a Halo tournament, which will have a $50,000 prize pool and is the final qualifier before the Halo World Championship Finals with its $1 million prize pool. According to Newzoo, a leading videogame intelligence company, about 115 million people saw e-sports live or online at least once a month in 2015.

E-sports was also the subject of a panel discussion at Pollstar Live! 2017.