Tencent is creating an entire town dedicated to esports

Tencent, China's largest on-line video games developer amongst different issues, is constructing a whole city devoted to esports.

The city can be situated in Wuhu, east China, the place Tencent has simply signed a framework settlement with the native authorities. 

The deliberate esports city could have an esports theme park, esports college, cultural and artistic park, animation industrial park, a artistic neighbourhood, a Tencent know-how entrepreneurship group, and even a Tencent cloud knowledge middle.

Tencent — higher recognized for its messaging providers WeChat and QQ — will even convey QQJOY (a conference for QQ's cellular video games) and QGC (a cellular gaming competitors) to Wuhu, in response to a statement from local authorities. Metropolis officers added that Tencent has additionally signed an settlement to carry this yr's QGC finals in Wuhu.

Wuhu is not the one metropolis Tencent is investing in. The corporate can also be planning to build a theme park in Chengdu constructed across the Chinese language cellular fantasy role-playing recreation Honor of Kings, which reached 50 million users in January this yr.

It exhibits the lengths Tencent is prepared to go to make sure it is on the forefront of China's esports business. Over 47% of Tencent's 2016 income got here from video games, with Tencent's gaming unit posting revenues of almost 70.84 billion yuan ($10.2 billion) final yr, dwarfing that of rival NetEase, which posted revenues of 28 billion yuan ($four billion).

That income stems from the sheer measurement of the online game market in China — almost 500 million individuals in China play video video games, and about 145 million of them play greater than an hour per day, in line with a 2014 estimate by Eedar, a market analysis agency.

The truth that Tencent is raking in money from esports is not misplaced on native governments both. Metropolis and county officers are more and more looking for the esports greenback to stimulate the native financial system and drive tourism.

Taicang, a metropolis in Suzhou, east China, announced a planned three.55 sq km (1.37 sq mi) esports city in April, which might embody a mixed area for esports cultural shows, "expertise zones" for video games by Taicang's lake, and an esports industrial park. 

The trouble mirrors that of Zhongxian county in Chongqing, southwest China, which pledged to inject four billion yuan ($580 million) over three years into its esports industrial park in April.