The Corps will play at home. The e-sports club – one of the most popular in France – will benefit from a performance arena from the summer of 2024 to organize its own matches and events in public, a first in the sector in Europe.
The club will set up in the “Arènes de l’Agora” in Évry (Essonne), a room which can accommodate up to 3,000 people, and will organize up to 25 events per year there, explained to the AFP its general director Arthur Perticoz. Karmine Corp thus becomes the first European e-sports club to integrate an arena as a resident club. Created three years ago, the “Corps” has enjoyed dazzling success and built a fanbase of hundreds of thousands of supporters in record time. On Saturday, she brought together 28,000 supporters at Paris la Défense Arena, breaking attendance records.
“What we want now is to move up a gear, to be in a model close to traditional sport and to be resident in an arena to create regular events,” explained Arthur Perticoz. “It’s a change in business model since it means having subscribers like in stadiums, having ticket sales like traditional clubs. »
In classic sport, clubs benefit from an arena to play their matches, which provides them with an important source of income. But in esports, with most tournaments taking place online, clubs generally cannot rely on ticketing to generate revenue. “We believe we are the only team or almost only able to do it, it is a thunderclap in the industry because it means that an e-sport team is capable of doing up to 20 or 25 events per year like a football club,” added Arthur Perticoz. “Our model is to say to ourselves: “Since we aim to become the PSG of e-sport, we must have our Parc des Princes”. »
The “Corps” signed a lease “for several years” with Les “Arènes de l’Agora”, owned by the Grand Paris Sud conurbation. The community welcomed this partnership which demonstrates its “capacity to innovate” according to its president Michel Bisson. “What we want is to stick to our society, to stick to our youth,” he declared, emphasizing the “societal role” of e-sport as a “lever” to address young people. .
“We also show that we are giving young people a chance and that we are looking to the future,” added the mayor of Évry-Courcouronnes Stéphane Beaudet.
