E-sport park to settle in Tianjin

The Eco-City Allied E-sports Park jointly built by Allied Esports and Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city will be completed by August.

The park, covering an area of 4,000 sq meters, is an entertainment complex that integrates e-sport, culture and recreation. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

In the traditional concept, people equate e-sport with playing electronic games. The truth is, e-sport has taken electronic games to the level of athletics. Participants can train and improve their thinking and reaction ability, coordinate their skills and willpower, and cultivate team spirit.

In 2003, the General Administration of Sport of China acknowledged e-sport as a formal sport program. In October, 2017, the International Olympic Committee also announced e-sport as a formal sport program and a promising Olympic event.

Varying from most traditional sport events, e-sport competes in intelligence. But even more important, it is played with different kinds of electronic games, which is much more entertaining.

According to statistics released by a third party, the market size of China's e-sport industry now exceeds 60 billion yuan ($8.9 billion), with more than 300million players.

At present, Allied Esports runs seven e-sport parks all across the world. Eco-City Allied E-sport Park is going to be the eighth.

"The park is equipped with professional stages, lighting, and shooting systems to meet the needs of different organizers," said Bai Jinzhong, the vice president of Allied Esports. Accordingly, no fewer than 20 e-sport leagues will be brought in after the park opens.

Under the e-sport industry lies an intact industrial chain, which includes gaming, animation, films and television, advertising and e-commerce. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

So far, more than 1,000 cultural and creative industries have settled in the Eco-city, and together showed an annual profit of 1.3 billion yuan in 2017.

The national animation industry park, where the e-sport park is located, is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as the first national cultural industrial park.

Not only did the national animation industry park build a copyright trading center to protect intellectual property, it also supplied a secondary technical school to open in September for the training of professional talents.

"The Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city will take the operation of the e-sport park as an opportunity," said Huang Yonghao, the deputy director of Eco-city, "to ceaselessly optimize e-sport's industrial chain, and make it a new highlight of Eco-city's cultural and creative industry."