ISPO's New Esports And Gaming Festival In Munich
The successful launch of the eSports arena at ISPO Munich in February proved that there is huge interest for digital sports within the industry. This will all be taken to the next level from July 3 to 7, 2019 with the first ever Electronic Sports Competition (ES_COM), the largest eSports and gaming festival in southern Germany, where gaming fans in particular will be in for an absolute treat.
The five-day program, packed with numerous highlights, is set to attract hobby, amateur and semi-professional teams as well as pro teams who will be able to actively take part or watch all the action as it unfolds. ISPO Digitize Summit (July 3 and 4) attendees will get the chance to immerse themselves in the world of eSports and make initial contacts on the scene. Both events will be taking place at the ICM – Internationales Congress Center München.
Gaming fans will soon be able to add a brand new annual highlight to their calendar in the form of the Electronic Sports Competition (ES_COM). Numerous eSports games, such as League of Legends, Rocket League, Just Dance and Mario Kart, invite participants to play or watch from the sidelines. Highlights will include a LAN party and the world’s biggest offline FIFA tournament with 1,000 participants. The festival will be held as part of the ISPO Digitize Summit, the digital conference for the sports business. “Interest in eSports is skyrocketing all over the world. New fans discover digital sports every single day and the market is therefore sizable,” says Christoph Rapp, Project Manager of the ISPO Digitize Summit. “With the Electronic Sports Competition we offer the eSports community a new home. Furthermore, the event is the perfect opportunity for participants of the summit to experience the world of eSports live and to make first contacts with important influencers.”
A wide variety of games will be featured in three different arenas in the form of competitions, which attendees can either watch or take part in. Part of the program are games such as League of Legends, Rocket League, FIFA 19, RaceRoom Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Just Dance and the NHL series from Electronic Arts, an ice-hockey simulation video game. An immersive virtual-reality experience is also planned in the form of Hologate, a virtual multi-player platform in which up to four players can simultaneously compete against each other in a three-dimensional world. One of the top highlights, the world’s biggest offline FIFA tournament with 1,000 participants, will be held on Sunday, July 7.
LAN parties are currently experiencing somewhat of a renaissance. Invented at the end of the 1980s, they became extremely popular in the first half of the 2000s. And now they’re back: interested consumers and the LAN community can look forward to a 72-hour party in Munich from July 5 to 7. More than 500 participants from Germany, Austria and Switzerland are expected. The tournaments will be continuously streamed on platforms such as Twitch to enable fans all around the world to follow the action.
The full program as well as tickets for ES_COM will soon be available online at www.ispo.com. Day tickets as well as a variety of other tickets and agreements for the LAN party and the offline FIFA tournament will be available soon.
ISPO Digitize Summit attendees will be given interesting insights into eSports as part of workshops and panel discussions. In cooperation with the German association for sports economics and sports management (VSD) a workshop on “Copycat or Innovation?! - Sponsoring and Marketing in eSport” is part of the program. Furthermore, representatives of the streaming platform Twitch, the market research company Nielsen and the German TV stations ProsiebenSat1 and Sport1 will share their experiences in the eSports market. Basic knowledge will be provided in a master class of the educational institute Sportbusiness Campus, in which the history of eSports will be explained and explored using scientific approaches.
