2024 EsportsTravel Summit Provides Wide Range of Education

The 2024 EsportsTravel Summit at the Raleigh Convention Center, May 29–31, featured a wide range of programming that all attendees could benefit and learn from.

The opening session of the 2024 Esports Travel Summit, “State of In-Person Esports Events,” covered how esports are evolving, from the professional ranks to the grassroots levels.

The panel included Katie Briggs, president at LANFest; Michael Brooks, executive director of the National Association of Collegiate Esports; Brian Mirakian, global esports director/senior principal at Populous; and Jascha Braeker, manager of the Host City Division at ESL FaceIt Group.

The panelists gave their views on several topics including the in-person esports landscape, the challenges and opportunities ahead for event organizers and destinations wanting to host events and what the future holds for the industry.

“Esports is breaking records, with the Esports World Cup happening for the first time this year with 19 titles and a $60 million prize pool,” Braeker said. “It sends a message to the wider esports community that we’re still growing. Gaming is inclusive on the server — the only thing that matters is skill. But there’s a still a misconception that women can’t compete, so we’ve tried to give women a stage to grow and kickstart their gaming careers with female-only tournaments.”

Brooks gave an overview of esports in the collegiate space, including expansion into more campuses.

“The collegiate space is doing fantastic and has seen exponential growth since 2014,” Brooks said. “This space used to be driven by smaller, private institutions and now we’re seeing public, larger colleges get involved, which is something that we love to see. Players want more in-person competition and more of an experience with multiple teams, not just for a championship final.”

Briggs has been pleased to see live events return in full force after several years of the post-pandemic scene forced most events to go online.

“During Covid we had to go online and you can make connections there, but it’s in-person events where people truly make those connections,” said Briggs. “Having people meet in person solidifies those relationships you build online. People gaming together also leads to mentorship. And when these younger players go through high school and college then can apply things they learned while gaming in the real world.”

Mirakian and his Populous team are looking at new ways to innovate the esports world, which includes potentially activating the Sphere in Las Vegas for in-person esports events, as well as doing more in the Middle East.

“The future looks bright in many aspects and we’re looking forward to what in-person esports events will become,” Mirakian said. “We’ve seen a lot of investment at the grassroots level, and there’s a lot of excitement when people come together for that cultural experience. Esports and gaming are becoming more global than ever and we’re following where the capital is flowing in the industry.”

How to Successfully Host an Esports Event

The session “Esports Event Case Studies” gave insight into how two destinations planned and executed collegiate esports events this year. The panel included Igor Bakovic, director of sports at the DuPage Sports Commission in Illinois, talking about his Midwest Esports Invitational, which held its inaugural event this past February.

Joining him were Jonathan Paris, executive director of sports tourism at Visit Myrtle Beach, and Joey Gawrysiak, executive director of esports at Syracuse University. The pair have collaborated on the Boost at the Beach esports tournament the past two years.

Bakovic said after attending the 2021 EsportsTravel Summit in Pittsburgh, the wheels started turning to bring a high-level gaming event to DuPage.

“The purpose of the event was to get ourselves and our community into the esports space and to learn from doing it for the first time,” Bakovic said. “As we began to understand more of what was going on in our county from an esports perspective, we knew we had some opportunities to host events. We felt like collegiate was the right way to go because of the amount of room nights needed and the cost of professional events was too high.”

The February 24–25 event at Scrims Esports Center drew 28 esports teams from 20 universities in eight states. Bakovic did much of the legwork himself when it came to reaching out to esports directors at various colleges to get them to DuPage.

“It was a frustrating, rewarding and fun process. In the end, it was a great learning experience because I got to talk to a lot of great esports directors across the Midwest,” Bakovic said.

DuPage controlled all the invitations for the tournament and found the total prize purse of $10,000 was enough to lure teams to its first esports event.

“There are schools that don’t care if there’s a prize pool and they just appreciate the in-person aspect because they mostly play tournaments online,” Bakovic said. “And then other teams said all they cared about was the prize pool.”

Paris said the move for Myrtle Beach into the esports space was necessitated by a desire to push forward as a destination.

“Our fields and courts were full, so we had to keep finding ways to grow and esports was a perfect fit,” Paris said. “It’s all about your perspective and how you judge success for these events.”

Gawrysiak and his esports students at Syracuse were a perfect fit to help organize the Boost at the Beach, which hosted its second event at The Hangout in Myrtle Beach this past March 8–10.

“I wanted my students to experience what it’s like to run an event off campus and it made sense to do it in Myrtle Beach,” Gawrysiak said. “We wanted to do it somewhere cool and you don’t need a cookie cutter facility like football, baseball, etc.”

The Hangout offers a unique experience for the competitors, as in-between games there is music, singing and even dancing on the tables.

“When you have a different type of event, the local media and residents will be curious as to what’s going on and it was big news in Myrtle Beach that weekend in March. Every news station was out and interviewing Joey,” Paris said.

Gawrysiak made it pretty simple for what’s needed to host a successful esports event — power and internet bandwidth. The rest can be adjusted to any venue.

“There were some challenges that we had to work around in a non-traditional environment,” Gawrysiak said. “But it was still a really high-quality event and the players liked it because it wasn’t your standard event.”

The event doubled in size from six teams in 2023 to 12 in 2024, and was a mixture of big name universities such as Clemson and South Carolina, mixed with smaller schools including Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) and Marysville (Tennessee). The event also had a high school Smash Bros tournament, something the organizers want to expand in future years.

“A lot of the marketing we did was on socials to make sure we were reaching the players, including longform and short form content pieces,” said Gawrysiak. “Now, going into the third year, we have teams reaching out wanting to come.”

The Closing Luncheon of the EsportsTravel Summit featured the session, “Travel and the Metaverse,” took a deeper look at how major travel brands such as Carnival, Marriott and Hilton — among others — are using Metaverse environments to educate, attract and deliver new generations of customers through unique marketing tactics.

The session — which was sponsored by Bloomington, Minnesota, host of the 2025 EsportsTravel Summit — included Nathan Lindberg, founder and chief executive officer of MoneyBadger Consulting LLC; Chris Mann, chief operating officer of Subnation; John Gaudiosi, co-founder of Moonrock and Cody Flaherty, chief operating officer of Atlas Creative.

Education Sessions

For the first time at the EsportTravel Summit, programming was split between two tracks — destination/supplier and event organizers. The two groups experienced education sessions tailored to their specific needs.

The destination/supplier education included:

• “Esports as Economic Development” featured Amanda Baker, partner marketing manager at Visit North Carolina, explaining that North Carolina is the first state to offer incentives for esports events held in the state.
• “Engaging Your Local Universities” included Ed Tomasi, president of PLAYHRDR Advisors; Tu Nguyen, esports coach at Guilford Technical Community College; Dwayne Meekins, esports coordinator at North Carolina A&T State University; and Ray Pastore, professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. This session gave insight into how to engage with local higher education institutions as they expand their esports offerings.
• “Your AV/Staging Questions Answered” featured James Bell, co-owner of OnPoint Rigging and Staging; Jonathan Chevalley, executive producer of technical services at The Special Events Company; and Andrew Evans, director of product marketing at Extron. The session discussed whether a venue is the right fit and what is required to host a successful in-person esports event.

The event organizer education included:

• “What CVBs Can Do for You” included Tammy Dunn, executive director of the Snohomish County Sports Commission, and Jocelyn O’Sullivan, sports sales manager at the Greater Raleigh Sports Alliance, discussing how working with a convention and visitors bureau or sports commission on esports events can be beneficial to an event organizer.
• “Understanding the Impact of Your Event” featuring Daryl Cronk, senior economist at Tourism Economics, gave insight into how to measure the true economic impact an esports event and the tools that destinations have to help make the case for an event’s impact.
• “How to Partner with Destinations on Events” included Titus Walker, chief executive officer of Ultimate Endgamers League; Chris Peay, chief marketing officer of Cxmmunity Media; and Martin Montes, head of host cities and partnerships at GK Nordic. This session explained best practices on how to capitalize on partnerships between the event organizer and destinations to make the best event possible, and how to turn destination and venue partnerships into long-term relationships.
• “Quests and Collaborations” featured Renitta Sweet, events and marketing manager at the*gameHERs, and a unique forum designed to create an inclusive and creative think tank among gaming enthusiasts.