How live esports events can compare to live sporting events.

By Rachel Olsen-Cooper

A red carpet stretches the length of the floor at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas. On each side, velvet ropes hold back the rowdy fans, many sporting the jerseys of their favorite teams, some of them holding signs with slogans or well wishes for the players. Cameras of different media outlets line the crowd, flashes ready.

As the bass-heavy music starts to play, the crowd roars and the teams walk through the smoke to the stage where a silver plate, their prize, awaits.

This isn’t the makings of a major sporting event. This is the Grand Finals of the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Dallas, where two teams battled for the right to call themselves the champions in Counterstrike: Global Offensive (CS:GO).

The IEM competition was just one of many esports events that were held this year at DreamHack Dallas. DreamHack, according to the ESL FaceIt Group, is a gaming lifestyle festival. They bring together esports and the gaming community together for a fun filled weekend that includes live esports events, cosplay events, content creators, live music, and bring your own computer LAN (local area network) parties. Attendees could enter tournaments with throwback games, go on scavenger hunts to get free swag, play Magic: The Gathering, and even take on a mechanical bull.

Joseph Anderson from San Antonio, Texas, made the trek to Dallas for the event with his son, and said it was definitely well organized with a lot to see. “It was my first DreamHack, but I’ve been to other gaming events from other companies. The experience was great, I only wished I had planned things out a bit better because there were a lot of cool panels and events I missed just being ignorant to how much they actually had to offer.”

Over 44,000 people filled the halls from June 2-4. There was something for everyone, but the biggest draw were the esports competitions that filled the weekend. At the Game Developers Conference in 2015, James Lampkin, at the time the Senior Manager of Programming at ESL, said that they try to run their events like DreamHack as a combination of a trade show and a gaming event. He said that running an esports event at conventions (like PAX and Gamescom) that have 20,000 people in the venue, people are going to sit down and watch esports.

At events like DreamHack, they bring in multiple esports tournaments, coupled with the entertainment value of a convention, and it brings in a wide range of people who may not have shown up if only one esport was available.

Some of the gaming tournaments that were held included the ESL Impact Dallas Finals, which is the women’s CS:GO championships, the Halo Championship Series Global Invitationals, the Collegiate Rocket League World Championships, and the biggest event, IEM Dallas 2023. The IEM winners gained a spot in the group stages of IEM Cologne 2023, according to ESL FaceIt Group.

The draw to these live esports events is due to how similar they can be to traditional sports. Fans could be found chanting and clapping in between maps, similar to a soccer match. Fans done jerseys, smack talk other fans and the teams, and boo when they don’t like what happened in a match. There’s even unexpected surprises that get the crowd going. Most sporting events have their mascots doing crazy things for laughter and entertainment. The IEM match brought dinosaurs.

Anderson says that having other people around make the tournaments more engaging. “The CS:GO and Rocket League events were the most exciting and engaging for me to watch, but it also helped that they had the largest crowds.”

Even the prizes for winning can be a spectacle. A large silver plate was held high by ENCE, the winners of the IEM, along with a prize bucket of $100,000. According to the New York Times, the winners of the 2022 League of Legends World Championship received diamond rings, similar to those presented to sports teams who win their championships.

Farm teams in sports help pave the way for future stars, and similarly, amateur esports teams and players can be found in events like the DreamHack Open Featuring Fortnite tournament, as well as the DreamHack Fighters, both of which invited gamers of any skill level to try and win their share of prizes and future tournaments.

While a lot of attendees showed up for their favorite professional esports teams, Anderson hopes that future events will see more open tournaments, as many big events like DreamHack are by invitation only. “Of course, there are open play tournaments for people to have fun and win prizes, but I would love to see teams outside of professionals and major collegiate teams be able to gain some notoriety as well.”

The attendees of DreamHack brought energy to every tournament, and no team was left without feeling some type of love from the crowd. And just like a major sporting event, each team greeted each other after their matches with a smile and handshake. Fans became friends, exchanging social media handles and phone numbers, already planning for their next live esports event, hoping that the next will be as exciting as the last.

The winners of all of the DreamHack Dallas tournaments can be found here.