How to turn video games from entertainment into the pot of gold? While many of us still take the digital world as something unreal, others have already derived quite substantial profits from the eSports rage. Or do you belong to retrogrades who believe that playing video games is a wing-ding for geeks? Come on, Statista says that the eSports audience expanded from 193 million in 2019 to 223 million in 2020 and is expected to get another 70 million by 2023. And this covers only electronic sports enthusiasts while occasional viewers add several hundred million people to the figures. What a market!
It is true that the International Olympic Committee is still debating whether to include eSport contests in its list of disciplines, but it is also the fact that China, South Korea, Italy, Russia, Finland and several other countries have officially recognized it.
However, the most popular tournaments don’t really need this recognition to gather huge audiences and awe their fans with multi-million prize pools. Specifically, The International 2019 stole the spotlight with $34,000,000 awarded to gamers. And for your reference, the largest eSports crowd was collected a long while ago — 120,000 fans arrived at Gwangalli Beach in Busan to watch the StarCraft finals in 2005.
Nowadays, beaches are no longer the choice when it comes to arranging video game competitions. They are held either fully online or over local area networks (LANs) with players gathered on specifically equipped sites. As for now, there are not so many dedicated venues constructed for this purpose across the globe, so organizers use all sorts of stadiums and convention centers that can be modified accordingly.
Sure, existing facilities should be retrofitted wisely to fit the specifics of eSports competitions, but we have plenty of shining examples of how it can be done in the real world. And here is our top list of arenas, ranged by their capacity, to inspire future hosts and organizers.

This venue cannot surprise you with its huge capacity either, but it really stands out from the crowd as the only facility designed specifically for eSports on this list. It opened its doors in 2018 and welcomed its first international-level competition right off the bat. It was the final stage of the Esports Championship Series by FACEIT for CS:GO, where Astralis grabbed the biggest part of a $750K prize pool. The following year, Astralis returned to the spot to win again in the $500K worth contest. Along with premier competitions, the venue serves smaller events, including Madden NFL, Fortnite, Valorant, and some other tournaments.