Counter-Strike’s Austin Major a step toward city, Moody Center building an esports business

Texas is one of the cradles of competitive gaming in the U.S., with the legacies of studios such as id Software, Ensemble Studios, Origin Studios and Origin Systems and events such as QuakeCon (coming in August) still felt in today’s scene (over 100 development houses, not counting smaller indies, still call Texas home). And Counter-Strike’s competitive scene in the U.S. launched in Texas over 20 years ago. It’s that backdrop that serves as Blast’s first visit to Moody Center later this month for the Counter-Strike Austin Major, its first such event in the U.S. since Boston 2018.

Online qualifiers are underway, with the finals taking place at the Moody Center from June 19-22. Tickets — 40,000 over the four days — sold out within six hours of being on the market.

It’s the first esports event for Moody Center, which has become a hot spot not just for basketball but concerts as well. It also marks a concerted effort between the city’s sports commission, Moody’s, tourney organizer Blast and local businesses to cater to what they all hope are tens of thousands of fans. Sixty-five percent of the tickets were from fans outside Texas. Per the Austin Sports Commission, the city’s 15,000 hotel rooms in downtown and 55,000 throughout the region make it a prime locale for hosting events like a Counter-Strike major.

I spoke with various stakeholders — in this case, Blast VP/Ecosystem Andrew Haworth, Austin Sports Commission Executive Director Drew Hays, Moody Center GM Jeff Nickler (also president of Oak View Group Austin) and Complexity Gaming CEO and founder Jason Lake — about what it takes to stage a big esports event like the Austin Major in a city that’s never hosted such a spectacle before.

Before diving into the interviews, I did want to note a comment from Lake. While he said Complexity isn’t bringing any members of the Cowboys with them — Jerry Jones is also a co-owner of the organization — he wouldn’t be surprised if some Cowboys or other pros show up to the major.

“One thing that’s made me chuckle over the past seven years is how many professional football players are fans of esports players, how many professional athletes in America interact with esports stars,” Lake said, who went on to note that events like these are showing the confluence between pro sports and esports in the U.S., even when there’s not concerted effort to link up the two.

These excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity.

Tapping into Texas’ legacy of gaming

Jason Lake (whose team is based in Frisco): “Perhaps we’re the ‘spiritual hosts,’ as Complexity started playing events in Texas about 22 years ago. We definitely consider America to be home and Texas to be the birthplace of Counter-Strike esports.”

Andrew Haworth: “[For] attendance, Texas is up there for Counter-Strike. While we want to be bold and bring the best entertainment product to fans, we weren’t doing that spuriously — we wanted to do it somewhere with passion for Counter-Strike. We had to wait for a major to make that splash.”

Drew Hays: “Austin is referred to as ‘Silicon Hills.’ Combined with a new state-of-the-art arena, we knew Austin could be a prime location for esports not just now but into the future.”

Promoting Texas and the U.S. for esports

Lake: “Anytime a tournament organizer like Blast and their partners bring such a significant event to our region, we’re going to do whatever we can to support them. … American fans love to attend live events. I know the American fans are going to fill the stands and bring lots of energy.”

Jeff Nickler: “The desire was for Moody to be one of the busiest arenas in the country. Under that umbrella, the bulk of our content is music — it’s one of the five busiest arenas for music in the world — but our goal was to take that music calendar and complement with every genre of event possible, from sports to music to comedy and now esports. We worked several years to get across the finish line for our first major esports event, and I hope this is just the beginning of a great relationship with Blast.”

Austin’s path to a Counter-Strike major — and what it means for Texas

Hays: “When esports was first evolving for us and our board of directors in 2018, we went through a strategy session on what type of sporting events we should target for Austin, and esports was No. 1 on the list. … We went through a number of unsuccessful bids on the lead-up to hosting the Blast.tv Austin major. We’re excited, not just from a promotional standpoint for the city, but also, it’s going to drive huge economic impact to our local economy.”

Lake: “The direct economic impact is estimated to be $30 million. Forty-thousand tickets sold, with 65% from out of state. Any time an American city can bring in that kind of economic impact and that many people from out of state to experience their culture and fill their hotels and restaurants, it’s a big win.”

Haworth: “When booking this, at the end of the COVID period, with Moody Center just coming online as a new venue, we wanted to hit one of the hot spots in the U.S. for entertainment. … Wanted to bring it back [a Counter-Strike major] with a bang, in one of the most fun, most exciting cities in the U.S. — Austin’s welcoming.”

Austin’s strategy for the future

Hays: “We’re looking for both [arena events and competitions with conventions, like fighting game event Evo]. This is a great case study for us. From a convention-event perspective, Austin is getting a new convention center in 2029, so we’re looking at all of it. We’re not going to pigeonhole us into one specific type of esports competition.”

Biggest hurdes and learnings for the Austin major

Hays: “Timing. When we submitted our initial bids, we didn’t have the complete package together, whether offsite venue, hotel space, arena load-in dates secured. But we got it all lined up.”

Nickler: “We had no idea of the scope and reach of the fanbase for this type of event. The percentage of fans coming from well outside the market and the percentage of international fans is unique for us. The demand we had not only for public ticket sales but also for premium inventory was through the roof. We fielded hundreds of calls from fans who wanted to buy suites or premium seating or upgraded experiences for this event. The demand for us was on-par for a music residency on the scale of a Harry Styles or Billie Eilish.”

What Moody Centers offers

Hays: “It’s a world-class arena. From a technological standpoint, from a premium seating standpoint, from its location in downtown Austin, it’s one of the busiest arenas in the country.”

Haworth: “[Location] always plays a part. Moving 200 players and 100 of their support staff plus 150-200 staff ourselves, let alone 40,000 fans who bought tickets, [Austin and Moody Center] score high on both of those events. … Moody is a brand-new venue coming online. When we were booking it, it had the latest and greatest in technology and venue layout. Love its location on a university campus, you’re pretty close by European standards to downtown, so it’s walkable. So many great venues in world and U.S. are on outskirts of the city, so you don’t feel the city’s vibe energy, and you do have that with Moody Center, which is important to the event. … It’s very easy to load into it, rig and set staging, cabling and internet — all the stuff that we have to lift and put in backstage that’s usually a pain for the team isn’t a pain.”

Nickler: “It’s a new arena, barely three years old, so it’s state of the art in every single way, from the ease of load-in, because the production for an event of this scale is massive, to build this incredible stage, an adequate seating capacity — over 15,000 when filled — and then all those premium hospitality spaces, concessions options, bars that fill out the arena. These folks come to the arena and spend hours upon hours at these events, so having the capability to serve these fans from a food and beverage perspective is huge as well. … The size and scope of this event, the last major event we did that was multiple days and required a similar lift on technology was the CMT Music Awards, a major televised award show. It would be a good comparison — multiple days of load-in, a sold-out crowd, a very unique, specific design stage and look for the event. This building was built to be flexible and host any type of event, regardless of bandwidth or technology needs.”

On worries about foreign fans entering the U.S.

Haworth: “I don’t see how the U.S. is really any different than rest of world — if you’ve got the right process, follow rules and you’re bringing value to a location, I find the world is welcome and open to business.”