TenGIG festival to bring thousands of eSports players to Chattanooga in October

Jared Nixon says he was an entrepreneur before he even had a real job, and over the past two decades the Los Angeles businessman has worked on or with others to help open Los Angeles night clubs, launch new apparel brands, supervise hundreds of music video product placements and partner with Shark Tank investor Daymond John on numerous other projects.

But Nixon believes that electronic video gaming, or eSports, has more economic potential than all of those ventures. And the serial entrepreneur is convinced that Chattanooga is the perfect spot to grow the industry, or at least to hold a festival to celebrate and develop the growing interest in eSports.

Nixon, who said he was "blown away" by Chattanooga's growing internet-based startup scene, said he began talking with Next Generation Esports (NGE) about bringing one of its eSports events to the Southeast, where they have not previously had any major live events. With backing from EPB, VayerMedia and the city of Chattanooga, Nixon created the TenGIG festival, slated for Oct. 6-8 in downtown Chattanooga.

The three-day festival is expected to attract 2,000 to 3,000 attendees over the Columbus Day holiday weekend to play and stream the biggest games in eSports on EPB's 10-gig fiber network.

The inaugural TenGIG festival will include three competitive eSport and video game competitions shown in the Memorial Auditorium along with a concert at the First Tennessee Pavilion, discussion forums at the Edney Building and other activities across Chattanooga's downtown Innovation District.

The multi-player video game competitions will determine League of Legends champions, the greatest shooters in Call of Duty, the cream of the crop of Street Fighter players, the elite Dota 2 competitors, and more, according to event organizers.

The festival will be a collegiate club team invitational event in the Southeast for League of Legends, the No. 1 game in the world, which involves five players on each team. Some of the best collegiate teams in the country are in the Southeast and will be competing at the festival, including Vanderbilt, Texas A&M and Georgia Tech.

Nixon said he wants to include multiple games during each year's festival, and he hopes tens of thousands of persons will watch the event online.

TenGIG also will feature a Playerunknown's BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG) LAN open play - streaming 100 feeds simultaneously. The 100-person battle-royale survival game, developed by Bluehole, has quickly become one of the biggest games in the country, clocking millions of downloads since its launch in March.

In another "first," TenGIG will have four Killer Queen arcade cabinets located throughout the city. The 5v5 arcade strategy game is the most exclusive arcade game in the world - with only 28 cabinets in existence across the globe.

"We're going to stream all of this, which has never been tried technically before," Nixon said. "Utilizing the 10 gig service and the bandwidth it provides, we think we can pull this off. There will be a lot of things here that will be the first of their kind."

Each game will have its own online commentators and followers on Twitch, the live streaming video platform acquired by Amazon in 2014.

The organizers have committed to doing the TenGIG festival for each of the next three years, and Nixon hopes that the event could do for Chattanooga and eSports what the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival did to help grow the tech scene in Austin, Tex.

"I could see something similar happening in Chattanooga if TenGIG starts to take off," Nixon said. "Hopefully, you start to see publishers move to Chattaooga; you see the talent and the gamers themselves start to move to Chattanooga. That could create a whole new industry around something that began as a festival."

Around the globe, about 300 million people tune in to eSports today, and that number is growing rapidly. By 2020, that number will be closer to 500 million.

Goldman Sachs valued eSports at $500 million in 2016 and expects the market will grow at 22 percent annually, compounded over the next three years into a more than $1 billion opportunity.

J. Ed. Marston, EPB's marketing vice president, said EPB made PCMag's "Best ISP for Gaming in the U.S." list for the past two years, "so attendees can stream content across their social networks with stability and clarity."

"TenGIG is a new style of gaming festival - combining esports, innovation, music and food - that allows attendees to enjoy events across downtown Chattanooga," Marston said.

Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said he also hopes the festival "will inspire young Chattanoogans while showcasing tech talent in our city."

"In Chattanooga, we have the fastest, most-pervasive internet in the world and a high quality of life," Berke said in an announcement of the festival. "Guests attending TenGIG will experience not only the best fiber network for gaming, but also a city that's focused on innovation and empowering people to lead the best life possible."

Mickey Cloud, senior vice president and head of VaynerMedia's Chattanooga office, said his company is eager to jump on to emerging consumer platforms, such as eSports.

"Part of our mission in Chattanooga is to see how we can impact and help foster the entrepreneurial ecosystem growing in the Innovation District," he said.

Nixon said he first heard about Chattanooga five years ago when he ran into a group of EPB executives at an innovation conference at the University of Southern California.

"When they started telling about how they had the fastest internet in the country, I couldn't believe it - in Chattanooga?" Nixon recalled.

But he was convinced to come to one of the GigTank presentations organized by The Company Lab.

"I have been to a lot of startup communities from Austin (Texas) and Boulder (Colorado), but I couldn't believe that Chattanooga had this incredible infrastructure and they were getting things done," he said.

"They said, "We're going to put in this fiber optic network and put in the fastest internet in the world," and it got done. The mayor said, "We're going to create an Innovation District," and it got done."

Now, Nixon said he hopes the city's "can do" reputation will help launch and grow the TenGIG festival and the eSports industry it celebrates.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6340.

Upcoming Events