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Level Up: The rise of esports

Imagine you’re in a stadium filled with people, laser lights, and music. At a first glance, you might mistake this for a rock concert, but this is no ordinary event. This is the setting of a gaming arena, a battle of esport professional gamers and their worldwide fans.

The esports economy is worth in excess of $US600 million and it continues to grow 40 percent year-on-year. This year, at the IEM World Championship in Poland, a record-breaking 46 million fans tuned in online to watch the tournament. That’s more than four times the amount of people who watched the AFL Grand Final!

You might recognise the names of professional sports heroes like Buddy Franklin or Cathy Freeman. But have you heard of Kuro Salehi Takhasomi or Amer Barqawi? Combined, Kuro and Amer have won over $5 million in esport tournaments, but their names don’t reach far outside the gaming community… yet.

How long will it take for these names to become common among sporting legends? When will families sit down to watch League of Legends instead of the Sunday Football?

Well, that Sunday esport session may be closer than you think. This year, South Australia made sporting history with the Adelaide Crows buying professional esport team: Legacy esports. The Crows are now gearing up to run their first ever esport tournament at Etihad Stadium.

To learn more about what the future of esports will look like, come join us at Melbourne’s first esports bar!

We’ve compiled a panel of gamers, academics, media representatives and business leaders to cover the practical and theoretical concepts of esports: the revolutionary gaming platform.

RSVP on the Academy Xi website: http://bit.ly/2zTOEE8

When

22nd November 2017 06:00 pm
To 22nd November 2017 08:00 pm

Where

GG EZ
Basement 93-95 Queen St
Melbourne 3000