I’ve come to an annual esports tournament in Hong Kong, where gamers from all around
the world have gathered to battle in four tournaments.
We're not a bunch of bros drinking beer and playing Mario Kart in the basement.
Twelve international college and university teams are vying for bragging rights and monetary rewards.
When your program is as prestigious as ours, you need to make sure you stay on top.
During the festival, I will be meeting players and fans to see how this fast-growing sector
is becoming a billion-dollar industry.
Electronic sports, or esports, is competitive video gaming at a professional level,
and every year, its audience is growing by the tens of millions.
454 million people are expected to watch an esports event this year.
And with total esports revenues expected to hit $1.1 billion in 2019, it’s no surprise
that new multi-million-dollar esports arenas are popping up around the globe, including here in Hong Kong.
I’ve come to Asia’s largest esports complex which was launched earlier this year,
and it’s open for gamers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Let’s go take a look.
The 25,000 sq ft complex includes training facilities and a competition arena for up 80 players.
The Cyber Games Arena, which cost $3.8M to build, is expected to attract 1.2M visitors annually.
That’s where I meet Andrew Smith.
The competitive gamer has come to Hong Kong with his esports team from Maryville University
in St Louis, Missouri to compete in the International College Cup.
He’ll be playing League of Legends.
It’s a multiplayer battle arena game, made by Riot Games, which was acquired by tech giant Tencent.
And just like any professional athlete, you need your equipment.
I'm the kind of person who will use one thing until it pretty much doesn't work anymore.
The essentials are really your headset, your mouse, your keyboard and your mousepad.
Beyond that, you’re getting into the extra territory, but those four are the real crucial ones.
It’s not just gaming publishers capitalizing off the esports boom.
Companies like Logitech, Dell and even Ikea are rushing to get a piece of the market.
Andrew gives me a crash course in League of Legends.
Yeah, so you’re not doing very hot right now.
They’re actually killing you, and you’re about to die.
You can see your health bar is getting low.
I quickly realize this game is much more complex than the Mario racing games I've been used to.
This game has a very, very steep learning curve.
That’s why it takes thousands of hours.
Having just arrived in Asia after a 16-hour journey, Andrew is jetlagged,
yet eager to compete at the upcoming tournament.
It’s a crazy thing to go overseas across the world to play video games.
When I say I’m going to play League of Legends, they are like, "What are you doing?"
Then I say I’m going to Hong Kong, and they say, “You can go to Hong Kong by playing computer games?”
I played soccer, but what I really enjoyed doing when I was a kid was playing video games.
But it's not just the professionals logging hours on their favorite games.
The fans are too.
I love to play this game.
About three to four hours everyday.
Everyday!?
Yeah.
Three hours?
Four hours.
Okay, and do your parents get mad?
Yes.
They don’t like me playing games.
As a younger kid, I definitely had my troubles in school.
I spent a lot of times playing video games when I shouldn’t have.
But for Andrew, playing video games for 10-12 hours a day paid off – literally.
Andrew received a full scholarship to attend Maryville University, where he joined the school’s esports team.
It's officially under the university’s athletics department.
Being a head coach is one of those jobs you never really clock out of.
Tanner Deegan is the full-time head coach for the esports team at Maryville.
Even when I go home, it's something you’re always thinking about.
It’s the price you pay when you have that responsibility, you’re never really turning it off.
And with game day quickly approaching, the pressure is on.
I’ve come backstage of this weekend’s main competition and as you can see,
this is a full blown event.
You have greenrooms for the MC, for the commentators,
and then you have multiple rooms for the teams, where they strategize, give pep talks.
Let’s go check in and see what they’re up to.
There is a lot of nervous energy, you can really feel the tension in that room.
There is now a crowd that is starting to form.
This team flew from St. Louis to Hong Kong, and it really comes down to this moment.
It’s something you have to sacrifice to do, right? If you want to be the best in anything.
The competition here is truly global.
Maryville is in Hong Kong representing North America.
Their first game is against a team from the University of Porto, representing the EU.
You just really need to get into the zone.
It's a very mental game.
When something happens, you can feel it.
You can feel it in the ground.
Forty-five tense minutes later, Andrew and his team beat the team from Portugal.
Congratulations. You guys did it.
How does it feel?
It feels good.
We barely made it out of groups, so we're on to the next stage.
That’s the first thing I do after a game, I just go and drink a ton of water.
The atmosphere is electric.
Tens of thousands of spectators filled the Hong Kong Convention Center over the weekend.
And researchers say this is only the beginning.
About 454 million people are expected to watch esports this year.
That’s projected to grow by almost another 200 million in just three years.
And 57 percent of esports biggest enthusiasts are located right here in the Asia-Pacific region.
It all roots down to competition.
It’s not the game result all the time that matters.
It’s usually what surrounds it, the passion, the energy.
The demand for esports is growing so quickly, industry insiders are worried about a talent shortage.
Unlike traditional sports, esports doesn’t have a formal pipeline for turning amateurs into professionals.
That bottleneck could even slow down the field’s explosive growth.
But some are seizing the opportunity.
The Chinese Ministry of Education added esports and gaming into its postgraduate and vocational curriculum.
This means you can now take esports as a major at some Chinese schools.
And indeed that’s how Andrew and his team met their match.
The Maryville team made it to the final round of the tournament, but ended up coming in
second place to the winning team from China.
It was a great experience, we got to come out to Hong Kong, we got to play against other schools.
It was cool to see that we’re second in the world.
It was my last game as well.
Surprisingly, I don’t really feel that yet.
When I go back home and start switching up my life and my career, that's definitely when
I'll start to think about it. I did this for seven or eight years, I had my run.
Andrew is now becoming an assistant director and coach where he wants to further the popularity
of esports around the world, especially in colleges.
Think of him as an esports evangelist.
I’m one of the very first people to receive a full-ride scholarship,
fully covered for four years and graduate.
That will be cool to say in 20 or 30 years, that I was one of the first people to shape this landscape.
I think as technology evolves and more people have access to internet and computers, we’re
going to see esports grow to something that the world has never seen.