The movement has been happening slowly, with an event here, another championship there, but last year the city has opened its eyes to this market that has been growing rapidly around the world, as well as the event calendars, which are increasingly present in the city.
The first championships happened timidly in the extinct Rio Game Show, an event that grew and later became the Brazil Game Show. However, at the time, the city could not receive a big game fair. In 2011, the event attracted 60,000 people to the SulAmérica Convention Center, but in 2012, when it moved to the city of São Paulo and became exclusive to the new location, BGS received 100,000 people and practically doubled the following year.
In 2014, Rio received its first event exclusively for electronic sports: the big final of CBLoL in Maracanãzinho, the temple of volleyball and other indoor sports. There were 8 thousand people who could follow the championship cheering for KaBuM or CNB. The next of this level event would only happen again years later.
THE EYE ON GAMES AND ESPORTS
After the CBLoL, the city did not receive any more events for three long years, but things began to change in 2017. This was partly due to a plan by the City Hall of Rio that wanted to occupy the Olympic Park and started to see sporting events as a tool to get out of the crisis. Note that more and more the city hosts a championship of a different sport, going beyond football and beach volleyball. In 2018, one in four events that happened in the city was related to traditional sport.
According to Lucio Macedo, vice president of Riotur, "sports tourism is one of the great vocations of the city and a crucial point for the economy and leisure. Together, tourism, sports and culture, represent 14% of GDP," he said in an interview to newspaper O Dia. From this perspective, we can note that eSports are also the focus of politicians and entrepreneurs in the city, which since 2014 did not receive a great event of electronic sports.
In 2017, the Jeunesse Arena, which housed many tournaments during the Olympics, had been ostracized since the end of the games. Not just the stadium, but the entire Olympic Park. Critics said that the "legacy of the Olympics" was actually very concrete and money "thrown away." However, in May of that year, Jeunesse received its first eSports tournament, the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational. It was an important test.
With a gigantic structure and very well prepared to host Olympic-sized sporting events, the Jeunesse Arena hosted the event for a week, and even with the critics of the locals being a place far from the center of the city, whoever was behind the scenes had only praise to the structure of the site.
Months later, the Olympic Park hosted Rock in Rio with GameXP and, as much as AC / DC and Guns' n Roses were the real attractions, it was enough for GameXP's organizers to think about a specific event for the activity, which happened in September last year. A month later it was Jeunesse's turn to receive the Pro League finals of Rainbow 6 - another great success. And thist year, the Park will host Dreamhack Rio in April.
Rio de Janeiro is trying to become the capital of esports and games, which is easier when the place has a structure to host crowds and gigantic events. Things get even better when we find that the rental price is a lot less than expected. According to people who are close to the subject, the price to create an event at the Olympic Park is relatively low when we stop to observe what the venue offers.
Thus, Rio de Janeiro managed to get rid of criticism about the "legacy of the Olympics", attract new forms of business to the city and can still win a new title: the capital of esports in Brazil.
It may still be early to push this assertion, but whoever accompanies the electronic competitive landscape realizes that Brazil is becoming an obligatory stop for major international events of eSports, and the businessmen of Rio are attentive to this scenario to take the biggest slice of the cake.
Source: GMB / Rodrigo Guerra – ESPN
