EXPANDING OPPORTUNITIES IN ESPORTS

JOHN FAZIO — FOUNDER AND CEO, NERD STREET GAMERS

Growing up, Fazio was a varsity-level soccer player, which he says helped him get into college and see the world. “What was most profound about soccer to me, though, was how it equalized opportunities for everyone, no matter their background.”

Now Fazio is aiming to do the same thing for the burgeoning esports industry, where competitive video gamers vie for recognition and prize money, some superstar players earn as much as top pro athletes and viewership rivals that of traditional sports. One big impediment for aspiring gamers: the expensive equipment required to practice. “I realized that if competitive video games were going to be the same type of opportunity equalizer as traditional sports, we had to fix the access gap in technology,” Fazio says.

Toward that end, Fazio, a software engineer, built Nerd Street Gamers, a national network of facilities that provides affordable access to high-quality equipment, and hosts tournaments and training camps. So far, 200 gamers have gone on from Nerd Street programming to professional careers and college scholarships. This year, the company continues in high-growth mode, raising $11.5 million to expand its digital esports platform, which offers first-ofits-kind low-cost access to coaching, camps and virtual tournaments, and opening a new 35,000-square-foot training and tournament esports campus in Philadelphia.