- The Esports Stadium Arlington will host The WSB Championship, an “esports-style stock market trading competition” in October, organized by WallStreetBets.
- The competition, which will be live-streamed via pay-per-view, will consist of 12 competitors trading in live markets with their own money.
- The city of Arlington built the $10M USD stadium in 2018 by remodeling the former Arlington Convention Center. The venue is leased to Esports Events LLC for an initial period of 10 years.
Yesterday, events company WallStreetBets, which was established earlier this year by Reddit forum r/WallStreetBets founder Jaime Rogozinski, announced The WSB Championship, an “esports-style stock market trading competition” taking place in Arlington’s Esports Stadium from Oct. 28-30.
In a call with The Esports Observer, Rogozinski explained that “I say that it’s esports-style as opposed to an actual esports tournament, as esports makes a reference to a game. What we’ll be doing is trading real money with the real stock market. If the world of esports allowed me to say day trading is considered a sport, then I would be happy to just call it esports, but to avoid confusion and people thinking it’s a simulation, we used esports-style.”
The organizer is looking to select a pool of 12 U.S. citizen contestants through an application process followed by a qualifier event. True Trading Group, a trading information platform, will provide the competition’s yet-to-be-announced cash prize pool.
The concept of the WSB Championship “was an evolving idea between having my eye on esports as a completely different concept and forever I have been wanting to do something strong with WallStreetBets, something like a big trader convention in Las Vegas,” recalled Rogozinski. “While thinking of the different activities and speakers we could have, I said we could have a live day trading exhibition and as I expanded on the thought, I got really excited about it. At some point, it clicked and I thought something esports-related; I need to merge these two.”
The competition, which is planned to be live-streamed via pay-per-view, will see contestants trade American-style stock options available on the Chicago Board Options Exchange in live markets with an equal, predetermined amount of their own money. The organizer explained that “the winner will be the trader who makes the most money or is the last player with money remaining.”
Due to the current situation caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the Esports Stadium Arlington is closed until further notice. The WSB Championship is the third external event planned in the upcoming months at the stadium, according to its website. The Gears of War Texas Major and the EsportsTravel Summit being the other two.
In 2018, the city of Arlington, Texas, which has 396K inhabitants and is home to the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys and MLB’s Texas Rangers, committed $10M to build the Esports Stadium in its entertainment district by transforming the old Arlington Convention Center into the esports stadium, production studio, and gallery. The project was done in collaboration with sports and entertainment architecture firm Populous and Esports Venues LLC, who agreed to an initial 10-year lease with a 10-year renewal option to run the venue.
