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Zack: How much eSports center space do I need and what’s a good layout for my store? There’s a couple asterisks in this so it’s not a general floor plan or idea that you can follow in every situation, but there’s a couple problems that I see a lot of LAN centers make right off the bat when picking out their space and how to lay it out. We always recommend for eBash stores are 4,000 square feet or larger. I would think the minimum square feet you would want in a space is about 2,000 square feet. Now, that being said a lot of that is surrounded by my idea of the fact that you’ve got to have enough space for enough players on Friday and Saturday to be in your LAN center so that you can generate the most amount of revenue on your busiest nights just like it is for the movie theaters, just like it is for bars and clubs and everybody else. Those kind of things all happen on the weekends. You’ve got to have enough space to fit them all in. So minimum 2,000 square feet.
There’s really not a top end, but you got to keep in mind that once you get above 7,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet. That going to add a pretty high sizable lease cost or payment on a building if you’ve got a mortgage, but it’s going to cause you to try to figure out how to fill it all the way up and make it look full. Again you want it to look fun. You want it to look full. You’ve also got to have enough space for everybody to come in.
One thing that I see a lot of people doing is they go into this assuming that people need to have an experience different than they have at home, which is true in certain stances, but it’s a little bit opposite of what you might think when you’re starting a LAN center. I see a lot of centers, there was one in the east coast, I won’t say who it is, but I noticed that they set up a LAN center with giant 60 inch TVs in separate rooms with big couches and lounging areas and their idea was is that people needed a place to go and hang out with their buddies in one room by themselves with a giant screen and that’s just not the case for what gamers are going out and what they want. You don’t really need a lot of big TVs and a lot of space for players to play on gigantic screens.
What you want to give them is what they don’t have, which is the ability to line up four or eight or 10 or 15 players in a close area so that you can give the guy a punch in the arm when he sucks on your team or you can high five him when he does well and you don’t have to split screen like you each have your own screen. Space wise you want about 36 inches per gamer. You could go a little bit larger if you want to be a luxury center. We’ve squeezed them in to as little as 30 inches in our store without it being too uncomfortable, but we always shoot, basic rule for us is 12 feet of counter space is four gamers. If you want to set up for a lot of the PC games like League of Legends, Counterstrike, Heroes of the Storm, those are all five player matches, then you would shoot for fifteen feet of counter per team or per group that you want set up.
I’ve had this question twice this week .They want somewhere to go and compete and we love that. That’s the base of what we’re founding everything on for eBash & GG’s Circuit is levels of competition that will provide the foundation for players to enjoy something organized without traveling to New York and trying to compete in a $12 million thing that they’re never going to qualify for. What they make the mistake of thinking is is that we’re going to set this thing up and really focus on this eSports aspect.
Again you might be able to do that in a big city. There’s a new one that’s launching out in Orange County that I think is a really cool concept. It’s called Esports Arena. I don’t know those guys, never met them. I just watch a lot of the LAN centers and what they do. They have a stage. They have a lot of seating. They have a lot of pits, we call them, where they can do matches for tournaments before they qualify for the stage.
If you’re going to go that route, you’re going to have to run eSports stuff all the time. Most centers are going to want to have enough of a section of their store for a couple, we call them stages, but they’re really just a little raised platform. You want to have some big screens a couple places, but you don’t want to focus that on your primary business if you’re a typical LAN center because it’s just going to take up too much of your square footage. You’re not going to be able to get as many players in to play as you would players that’ll come in and watch. Again, you’re doing a big esports event. You’re packing it full of players to watch and to spectate then more big screens in bigger areas might make sense.
