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If all goes according to plan, in a few years Toronto’s esports teams will have a futuristic new home. Today, Overactive Media – the ownership group behind the Toronto Defiant of the Overwatch League and the Call of Duty The Toronto Ultra League – has announced plans for a new 7,000-seat venue in the city, designed to accommodate both competitive gaming matches and other events like concerts. The construction and opening of the site is expected to cost around $ 500 million in 2025.
The new arena will be located at Exhibition Place in Toronto, which is also home to BMO Field, home of the Toronto FC soccer club. It is designed by Populous, the prolific architectural firm behind recent projects such as the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London and the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. “The design of the theater was not conceived as a sports arena or an opera house, but rather as a new typology that straddles the two: a state-of-the-art performance hall,” said the lead designer of Populous , Jonathan Mallie, in a statement. “The architecture of the theater creates a fusion of the old and the new.”
The planned venue is far from being the premier esports arena – among other existing venues, the Overwatch The League’s Philadelphia Fusion is also planning a smaller-scale base – but that indicates a continuing trend. Organizations and leagues are looking for new ways to make money, diversifying their efforts beyond professional teams, usually through means such as clothing and content.
But a place like this represents something more ambitious. While esports teams will be the anchor, much like a traditional sports arena, the goal is to keep the building filled every night. Overactive says it plans to host more than 200 events per year and besides esports and concerts this should include “major city-wide conventions, corporate events, product launches. and price reductions ”. Meanwhile, the company also claims that it is “already in active discussions to attract some of the biggest esports events in the world”.
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