Austin Mayor Kirk Watson announced this week that Texas will be hosting one of the biggest esports events of the year.
More than 40,000 people are expected to attend the four-day championship matchup to be held in downtown Austin, with nearly 220 million projected viewers watching the event worldwide.
Karoline Leonard, who covers technology at the Austin American-Statesman, said the event is expected to draw participants from around the world.
“The BLAST Counter-Strike Major Championships is an annual event that takes place across the world,” she said. “And basically competitors will compete in this game, “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.” There are 32 teams that will take over a downtown Austin arena and they’ll compete in front of live audiences.”
“Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” is the fourth game in the “Counter-Strike” series. It’s a multiplayer game, but it’s a first-person shooter game, similar to “Red Dead Redemption” or “Call of Duty.”
“This event has a lot of good features about it,” Leonard said. “It’s going to have a lot of different livestreams that’ll go on. It will have tailgates to give it a ‘true American experience.’ And this is the first time that it’s returning to the U.S. in seven years.
The game itself is championed by a lot of European teams. So the fact that it’s coming back to the U.S. — and especially in Texas — is a really big pull for a lot of audiences.”
Participants are members of professional esports teams, Leonard said.
“There are a lot of times that there are different agencies. There’s one based here in Texas actually called Complexity Games,” she said. “And they help build these teams and put them together.”
Austin was chosen to host this event in part because the city has a track record of putting on large festivals.
“BLAST leadership said that they first started looking at Austin due to its ability to host large festivals… like South by Southwest and Austin City Limits,” Leonard said. “They believe that the competition itself will generate about $30 million in economic activity here in Austin.
It’s definitely not a small competition. And I had one of UT’s Counter-Strike team members tell me that they consider this the esports Super Bowl. And so this is a large competition that will bring in a lot of economic activity. They said that fans are expected to generate or spend nearly $500 every single day here in Austin. And about 70% of the fans coming to Texas are going to be from outside of the state.”
Tickets to the event sold out within six hours of it being on sale earlier this week, but Leonard said there are still ways for people to participate.
“BLAST leadership, as well as leadership within the arena, are looking to find ways to pack more people inside,” she said. “But if you’re looking to get more involved and to attend, they’re going to have these tailgates that are not ticketed that anybody can come to. And it will be livestreamed on BLAST websites.”
