Update: December 13, 2018: As many of you have realized, the remaining stories haven’t been completed, after 9 months they’ve been published. As I’m currently working on a startup and devoting all of my energy and time into it, I need to squeeze as much time as possible to write this up. I have decided to publish the 2nd article of the series in an incomplete state. I will work on it a la MVP/Work in Progress, meaning that it will progressively get better over time.

The first event I was an organizer. Aprox. 40 registered players. 3 small tournaments — 3DS (MK7, Smash, Pokémon)

Sup! You found that smash bros is cool, thought that it would be neat if you could run a tournament… Even better, make some money off it. Right? Isn’t eSports one of the hot things right now?

You may think: Easy-peasy: just get 8 TVs, a couple of chairs, tables, and you’re set… right? Well, after hosting and running 5 eSports events (From 16 to 180 simultaneous participants) I can tell you that there’s much more than it meets the eye.

Some questions that are often overlooked are: How are you going to acquire all the equipment? Who is going to promote it? Where? Do you understand what the community is playing? What about the venue? Where are you going to make it? If it’s online, how are you going to handle the tournament flow? How’s the tournament system? By brackets or pools? What are the prizes? How are you going to handle the tournament? What about on-site logistics… such as: available outlets, Internet, maximum capacity. Even more important… Are you trying to make this profitable? What are your streams of income? What are your operating costs? What if you end up running a huge event and losing money (as I did in the past — Lost $3,000+). This is actual event planning, and it’s no small feat. There are a lot of moving parts involved, and it takes time, money, and a lot of iteration to get things moving.

We had a layout of the venue. This allowed for placing the equipment rapidly, and without too much trouble.

I haven’t found a proper guide out there (At least, that I know of). Therefore, I decided on crafting my own, that would’ve saved me some bucks and precious time. This is not a silver-bullet, but merely something that can aid you in your journey.

Let’s go 🔥🔥.

This is going to be a living document, which will be updated with more information from feedback from the community:

Topics covered:

Note: Most of them need to must be done in parallel, and as you acquire knowledge and feedback they will be refined

1) Organizers — Team

2) Planning: Goals, Chronogram, how to handle effective meetings. (Coming soon)

3) Research. (Coming soon)

4) Legal. Contracts. (Coming soon)

5) Logistics. (Coming soon)

6) Selecting the venue (Coming soon)

7) Budget (Operating Costs) (Coming soon)

8) The art of Sponsorships and raising money. (Coming soon)

9) Marketing, and the trap of 1%. (Coming soon)

10) Tools for the event. (Coming soon)

11) Event Execution (Pre-meeting, day of the event, post-event). (Coming soon)

12) Online Tournaments. (Coming soon)

13) Final words (Coming soon)