Esports are set to take center stage at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, which will have its opening ceremony on Saturday. However, getting your hands on a ticket has proved a mammoth task.

Citing estimates by the Games’ Organizing Committee, domestic media has reported that at least 5 million people have applied for tickets priced between 200 and 1,000 yuan ($27-$137) — higher than popular sports such as table tennis, diving, and swimming.

Tickets for major professional gaming events often run higher than those of the Asian Games, with a tournament for Honor of Kings, the Chinese version of Arena of Valor, priced between 488 and 1,688 yuan for a final earlier this year.

The esports matches will be held in the starship-like Hangzhou E-sports Center — a custom-built venue for esports fitted with holographic projection equipment and 15 big screens, as well as a capacity of 4,000 — from Sept. 24 to Oct. 2.

The Games, which had the first day of events on Tuesday, marks the much-anticipated debut of esports as a medaled event after they were included as a demonstration sport at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta. Seven games are included: Street Fighter V, EA Sports FC, Arena of Valor, PUBG Mobile, League of Legends, Dream Three Kingdoms 2, and Dota 2.

“We hope to showcase a spectacular esports feast for audiences, including esports fans and broader sport enthusiasts,” Lu Xin, a member of the Hangzhou Asian Games Organizing Committee esports project, told state broadcaster CCTV in June.

Tickets for the esports events were sold using a lottery system that randomly selected spectators by a random draw after they placed their orders — the only sporting event using this system at the Games due to high demand.

In recent months, a string of hashtags related to the sport and the national team have trended on microblogging platform Weibo.

Tickets for most of the other events at the Games are sold out, a check of the official ticketing platform by Sixth Tone shows. Officials have previously said that there were more than 3 million tickets on offer during the Games.

According to a Tencent report published in July, the number of esports players has reached 478 million in China. Spending on esports has increased, with 29% of gamers spending between 500 and 2,000 yuan in the one year up to May 31, 2023, compared to 24% a year earlier. 

Editor: Vincent Chow.

(Header image: An aerial view of China Hangzhou E-sports center in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, June 20, 2023. VCG)