By Alan Snel
LVSportsBiz.com
LVSportsBiz.com photos by J. Tyge O’Donnell
If you put Las Vegas, the NBA and esports into a blender, you would create an NBA 2K League tournament called “The Turn” which began Thursday at the Luxor hotel-casino’s HyperX Esports Arena.
Now in its second season, the NBA 2K League is the first official esports league run by a professional sports league in the U.S. The 18-week season that began April 2 is holding its second of three annual tournaments in Las Vegas from Thursday to Saturday, with $180,000 in prize money on the line. In all, the three NBA 2K League tourneys, including the one at the Luxor this week, have $1.2 million in prize money at stake for the millennial players who are some of the best video game players in the country.
The NBA 2K League, based in Long Island City, is a joint venture between the NBA and Take-Two Interactive. The gamers on the 21 teams are paid in the $33,000-$37,000 range by the NBA and have their housing costs and health care covered. And they can make bonus money from the $1.2 million in money up for grabs in the three tourneys. The first tourney was held in Long Island City and the host city of the third tournament has not been revealed.
Las Vegas was a logical setting for the NBA 2K League’s second tourney because Las Vegas has evolved into a co-hub of esports along with Los Angeles and the Luxor is owned by MGM Resorts International, which is the gambling partner of the NBA and a big sponsor of the NBA Summer League held at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center every July.
The NBA recognized that the esports world was “exploding,” so the league wanted to catch the video game competition wave, said Brendan Donohue, the managing director of the NBA 2K League.
The esports league appeals to millennials, an important demo for any professional sports league to capture. But that was “more of a benefit than a goal,” Donohue told LVSportsBiz.com Thursday after the Orlando team defeated the Washington team in the first of five tournament play-in games.
Single day admission is $20, while multi-day admission is $30.
“We wanted to bring the studio experience on the road,” Donohue said of the Las Vegas setting for The Turn.
The players are 19-30 and they wear esports uniform shirts that have logos that are similar to the real NBA team logos, but they have an esports edginess to them. Take a look.
The competition continues Friday and Saturday.
Each team has five gamers on the stage in the esports arena, with the NBA 2K League deploying at least five camera people documenting the action. There’s a couple of commentators chatting about the teams’ performances and even a young woman who is kind of a “sideline” reporter interviewing “the player of the game,” who was a 20-year-old guy named Brendan Hall from Texas on the Orlando team.
The players have gaming stage names like “KennyGotWork” and “Splashking,” with the players assembled from a draft held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn March 6.
Professional sports leagues are hopping aboard the esports express because so many people around the world are gamers. The global audience for esports is expected to reach 557 million by 2021, including 250 million esports enthusiasts and 307 million occasional viewers.
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