Spurs to cash in on video games

New stadium could rake in £3m an event

TOTTENHAM are hoping to earn up to £3million per event at their new stadium by 2019 simply from staging video game tournaments.

Spurs’ executive director Donna-Maria Cullen has confirmed that the club want to bring a wide range of nonfootball action to their new £800m home, including lucrative major eSports events.

The stadium, due to open next year or by 2019-20 at the latest, will include a retractable pitch to allow NFL games and concerts, and the club want the new White Hart Lane to become a go- to venue for eSports as the craze takes off in the UK.

As our panel explains, eSports are video games played by professionals. Big events regularly attract crowds of 50,000plus in the US, Germany, Poland and across Asia.

Tickets for major tournaments in the US typically sell for between £20-£100 a head.

Tottenham’s new stadium will be able to hold 60,000 fans for non-sporting events, including a VIP capacity of 8,000.

Spurs could realistically generate up to £2.5m from ticket sales per event, with 50,000 ‘normal’ tickets at up to £30 and the balance sold as high-priced corporate seats. Tottenham could also generate between £500,000-£1m per event from sponsorship deals, catering and merchandise sales, plus additional commercial spinoffs.

‘We have looked at a vision for the club and stadium,’ Cullen told a sports business conference last week. ‘We are bringing the NFL over here. One of the reasons was to create something more significant [than just a football club] in Tottenham, in order to kick-start the regeneration of the area.

‘The sliding pitch we are installing means we will be able to host more concerts and other events. The NFL has driven up standards in our stadium. We will have new audiences coming into the sta- dium. The football stadium will be available to watch eSports, which regularly attract crowds of 50-60,000 spectators in Korea and the US, and could prove to be another opportunity to monetise the structure.’

Manchester City and West Ham are among the Premier League football teams that already have eSports players on their books — people who represent the club at eSports events, playing video games. An increasing number of sports teams from European football leagues in the Netherl ands ( Ajax and PSV) and Germany (Schalke) to NBA basketball teams in the USA (Philadelphia 76ers) have eSports teams, hoping to reach the hundreds of millions of fanatical video game players in the world and attract them to follow ‘real’ sport.