Inside the Salt Palace, fans sit enraptured in front of large screens, anxiously watching their favorite players compete in a sports match. Casters enthusiastically report the strategic moves on screen, counting down the time left. At some point, a “USA! USA!” chant starts, and a fan waves an American flag. The timer hits zero and fans jump to their feet, high-fiving each other and screaming for joy as DarkZero steals the win in the final match of the Salt Lake City Major.
The Salt Palace has seen numerous sports compete within its halls — but this time, it’s an esports tournament. Players and fans alike have traveled from all over the world to come to Salt Lake City, Utah, to watch or compete in Ubisoft’s competitive shooter game, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 Siege, otherwise referred to as Rainbow 6, R6 or Siege (depending on who you talk to).
During the three-day tournament, the on-site audience watched gameplay on large screens in the Salt Palace with the two competing five-person teams set up on a stage with monitors, PCs and headsets. Even larger was the number of fans watching the gameplay on YouTube and Twitch — so large, in fact, that according to Ubisoft, the event totaled 7.5 million hours watched, which is double last season’s final Major in Munich, Germany.
“Between the number of people you have at the events and the number of people watching online, most esports events are pulling better numbers than actual sports games,” the designer for Spacestation Gaming (SSG), Logan Reynolds, says. “For example, one of the Fortnite World Cups had more viewership than the Super Bowl did.”
With a multibillion-dollar global economy and talks of esports appearing at an Olympic level, it seems the momentum of esports has only just passed the starting line.
The esports community in Utah
As the “Crossroads of the West,” Utah has demonstrated its willingness to usher in new trends and opportunities, and esports might just be the next wave entering the state.
“We’ve been tracking the rise of esports over the past several years … and our destination in Salt Lake City and the greater area is poised to be able to host more esports in the future,” says Clay Partain, chief sports officer at Visit Salt Lake and executive director of Sports Salt Lake. “We already have all the raw ingredients to be able to host esporting events. We’ve got the local pool of high-level gamers. We’ve got the local large demographic [made up of millennials and Gen Z] who would likely be interested in esports. We have the facilities and infrastructure that can actually hold these types of events. [We don’t] have to go far outside the box to be able to land an esports event.”
This opportunity was also brought together thanks to SSG’s efforts, which according to Reynolds, actively works to put Utah on the map for consideration for future esports tournaments. “When we had a Halo tournament [here in Salt Lake City], we ended up winning that Major, so from that point on, every year people would talk about how SSG had the best Halo events,” he says. “Every year just got bigger and bigger. The last two years, we’ve been here at the Salt Palace and we’ve had a huge turnout for those events. It’s what got these guys [Ubisoft] willing to come out here for the Siege event, seeing the success that we’ve had.”
The “local pool of gamers” is also something that Ubisoft put into consideration when deciding on hosting in Salt Lake City — which was the first Major of four for this year. “Utah and generally this area of the United States was seen as a place where there’s a strong player base for Rainbow 6,” says Chrystina Matel, executive producer of Rainbow 6 Siege at BLAST (who hosted and broadcast the tournament). “Ubisoft wants to host events in places where there is a strong community, a sort of reward for that community and engage with them on the ground.”
Landon Johnson, gamer tag “Nuggies06,” is a local streamer and member of said community who attended the tournament with other community casters, co-streamers and online personalities to stream the event on their platforms. “I’ve lived here [in Utah] my whole life. Siege is my favorite game, so having the ability to come to this is really cool,” he says. “It helps build the community in Utah and realize it’s still alive and that people still enjoy it. I’ve met a ton of people already that I would have never met without the event.”
Sébastien Ratto, the senior director of esports R6 at Ubisoft, says, “It’s been two years since we were in the United States for such an event, so we are pleased to connect again with this community. It’s a small community with fans from different places, gathering themselves to celebrate the game that they love.”
Sports tourism paves the runway to the 2034 Olympics
According to the Division of Outdoor Recreation in Utah, sports tourism in 2023 brought in $9.5 billion to the state. Last year, according to Partain, Sports Salt Lake booked and worked with close to 100 sports events of different types and sizes.
“We like to believe that we are drivers in the tourism and sports tourism industry, especially in the western part of the U.S., where you see Salt Lake City on a very short list of places where a lot of these sports organizers are looking due to accessibility, proximity and price,” says Partain. “We have all those ingredients here: We’re close to the West Coast, but we’re not far from the Midwest and the East in terms of flight. We’ve got amenities like a brand-new, multibillion-dollar airport.”
While Utah already boasts a robust portfolio of sports tourism opportunities, the 2034 Olympic Games peeking over the horizon encourages industry leaders to think of other ways to diversify what Utah already proudly offers to locals and visitors alike — for instance, esports.
“I always say [we’re on the] runway to the Games,” says Partain. “The Olympic Games will be a moment in time, spanning about a month. But what are we doing in the eight years between now and then? We have opportunities to showcase our destination on an international platform.”
There’s also a possibility of esports appearing at an Olympic level, which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced a few years ago that they would put a more concentrated effort into doing so. “They [IOC] have talked about hosting a standalone esports Olypmics of its own, but I don’t know if they’re quite there yet,” says Partain. “But I do know that LA has talked about having exhibition-type esports going on during the 2028 Summer Olympics.”
Partain adds, “When you talk about an event like this, it’s adrenaline-fueled, it’s exciting like a boxing match, but not; it embraces technology, which totally fits our destination landscape in our state; it’s got the flavor of an international audience, and we see a lot of opportunity with more international events between now and the Olympic games in 2034.”
Esports vs. ‘traditional’ sports
Entering the sports tourism industry has been a unique path for esports; not altogether like a traditional sport, but not unlike it either.
“It is a legitimate sport and a legitimate profession,” says Partain. “You can get a college scholarship with esports. You can work as a professional in the esports space. It is a legitimate space worldwide — we’re talking about a billion-dollar-plus ecosystem just in esports.”
Matel encourages those still skeptical about esports that with these tournaments, seeing is truly believing. “If you don’t really understand what’s going on, I would say grab a ticket, go to an event, and once you get through those doors, you will understand that esports is just like any traditional sport,” she says. “It’s got those goosebump moments, you’re on the edge of your seat, you’re cheering. It’s got all of the things that traditional sports do.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Matel adds. “This industry has been around long before I joined, and it’ll be around long after I leave. … You can stand there and say you don’t believe it, but that’s just missing out on an opportunity.”
