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I've come to an annual esports tournament in Hong Kong, where gamers from all around
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the world have gathered to battle in four tournaments.
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We're not a bunch of bros drinking beer and playing Mario Kart in the basement.
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Twelve international college and university teams are vying for bragging rights and monetary rewards.
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When your program is as prestigious as ours, you need to make sure you stay on top.
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During the festival, I will be meeting players and fans to see how this fast-growing sector
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is becoming a billion-dollar industry.
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Electronic sports, or esports, is competitive video gaming at a professional level,
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and every year, its audience is growing by the tens of millions.
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454 million people are expected to watch an esports event this year.
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And with total esports revenues expected to hit $1.1 billion in 2019, it's no surprise
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that new multi-million-dollar esports arenas are popping up around the globe, including here in Hong Kong.
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I've come to Asia's largest esports complex which was launched earlier this year,
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and it's open for gamers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Let's go take a look.
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The 25,000 sq ft complex includes training facilities and a competition arena for up 80 players.
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The Cyber Games Arena, which cost $3.8M to build, is expected to attract 1.2M visitors annually.
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That's where I meet Andrew Smith.
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The competitive gamer has come to Hong Kong with his esports team from Maryville University
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in St Louis, Missouri to compete in the International College Cup.
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He'll be playing League of Legends.
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It's a multiplayer battle arena game, made by Riot Games, which was acquired by tech giant Tencent.
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And just like any professional athlete, you need your equipment.
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I'm the kind of person who will use one thing until it pretty much doesn't work anymore.
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The essentials are really your headset, your mouse, your keyboard and your mousepad.
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Beyond that, you're getting into the extra territory, but those four are the real crucial ones.
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It's not just gaming publishers capitalizing off the esports boom.
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Companies like Logitech, Dell and even Ikea are rushing to get a piece of the market.
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Andrew gives me a crash course in League of Legends.
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Yeah, so you're not doing very hot right now.
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They're actually killing you, and you're about to die.
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You can see your health bar is getting low.
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I quickly realize this game is much more complex than the Mario racing games I've been used to.
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This game has a very, very steep learning curve.
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That's why it takes thousands of hours.
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Having just arrived in Asia after a 16-hour journey, Andrew is jetlagged,
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yet eager to compete at the upcoming tournament.
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It's a crazy thing to go overseas across the world to play video games.
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When I say I'm going to play League of Legends, they are like, "What are you doing?"
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Then I say I'm going to Hong Kong, and they say, “You can go to Hong Kong by playing computer games?”
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I played soccer, but what I really enjoyed doing when I was a kid was playing video games.
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But it's not just the professionals logging hours on their favorite games.
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The fans are too.
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I love to play this game.
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About three to four hours everyday.
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Everyday!?
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Yeah.
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Three hours?
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Four hours.
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Okay, and do your parents get mad?
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Yes.
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They don't like me playing games.
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As a younger kid, I definitely had my troubles in school.
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I spent a lot of times playing video games when I shouldn't have.
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But for Andrew, playing video games for 10-12 hours a day paid off – literally.
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Andrew received a full scholarship to attend Maryville University, where he joined the school's esports team.
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It's officially under the university's athletics department.
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Being a head coach is one of those jobs you never really clock out of.
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Tanner Deegan is the full-time head coach for the esports team at Maryville.
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Even when I go home, it's something you're always thinking about.
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It's the price you pay when you have that responsibility, you're never really turning it off.
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And with game day quickly approaching, the pressure is on.
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I've come backstage of this weekend's main competition and as you can see,
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this is a full blown event.
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You have greenrooms for the MC, for the commentators,
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and then you have multiple rooms for the teams, where they strategize, give pep talks.
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Let's go check in and see what they're up to.
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There is a lot of nervous energy, you can really feel the tension in that room.
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There is now a crowd that is starting to form.
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This team flew from St. Louis to Hong Kong, and it really comes down to this moment.
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It's something you have to sacrifice to do, right? If you want to be the best in anything.
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The competition here is truly global.
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Maryville is in Hong Kong representing North America.
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Their first game is against a team from the University of Porto, representing the EU.
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You just really need to get into the zone.
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It's a very mental game.
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When something happens, you can feel it.
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You can feel it in the ground.
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Forty-five tense minutes later, Andrew and his team beat the team from Portugal.
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Congratulations. You guys did it.
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How does it feel?
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It feels good.
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We barely made it out of groups, so we're on to the next stage.
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That's the first thing I do after a game, I just go and drink a ton of water.
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The atmosphere is electric.
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Tens of thousands of spectators filled the Hong Kong Convention Center over the weekend.
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And researchers say this is only the beginning.
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About 454 million people are expected to watch esports this year.
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That's projected to grow by almost another 200 million in just three years.
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And 57 percent of esports biggest enthusiasts are located right here in the Asia-Pacific region.
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It all roots down to competition.
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It's not the game result all the time that matters.
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It's usually what surrounds it, the passion, the energy.
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The demand for esports is growing so quickly, industry insiders are worried about a talent shortage.
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Unlike traditional sports, esports doesn't have a formal pipeline for turning amateurs into professionals.
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That bottleneck could even slow down the field's explosive growth.
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But some are seizing the opportunity.
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The Chinese Ministry of Education added esports and gaming into its postgraduate and vocational curriculum.
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This means you can now take esports as a major at some Chinese schools.
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And indeed that's how Andrew and his team met their match.
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The Maryville team made it to the final round of the tournament, but ended up coming in
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second place to the winning team from China.
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It was a great experience, we got to come out to Hong Kong, we got to play against other schools.
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It was cool to see that we're second in the world.
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It was my last game as well.
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Surprisingly, I don't really feel that yet.
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When I go back home and start switching up my life and my career, that's definitely when
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I'll start to think about it. I did this for seven or eight years, I had my run.
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Andrew is now becoming an assistant director and coach where he wants to further the popularity
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of esports around the world, especially in colleges.
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Think of him as an esports evangelist.
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I'm one of the very first people to receive a full-ride scholarship,
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fully covered for four years and graduate.
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That will be cool to say in 20 or 30 years, that I was one of the first people to shape this landscape.
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I think as technology evolves and more people have access to internet and computers, we're
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going to see esports grow to something that the world has never seen.