Starting from last May, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has co-approved the establishment of ‘Seoul Game Theme Park’with the Ministry of Culture , Sports, and Tourism. The stadium will host 800 seats with 7 to 17 floors amounting to 10024m2 IT Complex inside the Sangam-dong’s DMC to create a stadium just for e-Sports.
Included in the establishing expenses for ‘Game Theme Park’worth KRW 45.8bil., the government will support KRW 16bil., making domestic and foreign e-Sports fans dreams come true. This stadium will be the first e-Sports stadium exclusively for e-Sports.
Along with the 800-seats ‘Main Stadium’ there will be another ‘Subsidiary Stadium’with 160 seats established, and this will surely turn out to be a standard model for the upcoming ‘e-Sports Stadiums’ around the world. The world’s first ‘e-Sports Stadium’ will also stand proudly on the backbones of South Korea’s strong IT infrastructure.
The specific structures and details of the stadium will be decided after discussions with experts. Also, other domestic tractors which will play a role of developing Korea’s game industry will move in too:
– Game-related R&D facilities, including ETRI(Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute)
– Game clustering center, providing space for domestic and foreign prospective game developers
– All game-related facilities, from game developers to distributors: Game museum, game experience zones, and much more.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to foster ‘Game Theme Park’ in Sangam-dong’s DMC as a Mecca of game industries where all game infrastructure is clustered, and develop game industry as a core business that can create an important source of revenue in the nearest future.
Meanwhile, in the foremost 2010, the ‘World e-Sports Summit’ which will host representatives of global e-Sports competitions will take place in Seoul.
Starting from July 2010, sponsoring companies of global e-Sports competitions from Europe, Asia, America, and China will participate with 20 representatives including e-Sports media outlets and reporters. The summit will be focused on providing common codes and international standards of global e-Sports market, and coexisting methods through reciprocity.
One official from the Seoul Metropolitan Government said that “by opening the ‘World e-sports Summit’ with participants like Korea’s first IeSF in 2008, we will lay the cornerstone of e-Sports standardized model. Also, by soliciting understanding and support, we will open three-major game battles equivalent to Olympics in October every year, starting from 2012”
