Tomorrow, Saturday, Nerd Street Gamers will officially open the first Esports campus in the United States, right at the intersection of North Broad and Callowhill in Philadelphia.

Dubbed “The Block,” this 40,000-square foot space houses Nerd Street’s new global headquarters and Esports arena, which will showcase pro gaming events for spectators. It’s also open to the public for hourly gameplay, tournaments, summer camps, and more.

In the most simple terms, it’s a multi-purpose local hub for Esports, and it provides gaming opportunities for players who otherwise might not have the money or access to get involved.

Running the show is Nerd Street CEO John Fazio, a Pennsylvania native and former Drexel soccer player, who spoke with us earlier this week:

Crossing Broad: Congratulations on the opening of the new facility. I’m sure it has to be a proud moment and a big accomplishment for Nerd Street.

John Fazio: Yeah, and this is something that I dreamt up 15 years ago, when I was in high school working at an internet cafe. I was a soccer player and was getting recruited to play in college, and that was sending me all around the world. I got to meet people from all different backgrounds and got to experience all different walks of life. With Esports, it started getting really exciting, and it was clear to me that it was left out of touch for most people, and only the wealthy or middle class kids owned that $3,000 computer and good broadband internet. That problem has only gotten worse over the years, and for me it was always a passion to say ‘let’s get this equipment into people’s hands so that Esports can provide the same opportunities that other sports do.

CB: What’s the new facility going to be used for?

Fazio: You can think of it like an athletic complex. If you show up at a hockey complex, you’ve got a bunch of rinks, and you’re playing your games or having your practices on a variety of rinks and maybe one of the rinks is a stadium, and that’s where the championship games are happening. That’s what our facility is like, with video game stations. You’ve got stations all across the place that you can play for daily practice for your high school, your college, training, or maybe hang out with your friends and play. And then there’s a big stage that seats four or five hundred people, and that’s where the championship match will happen. It really replicates what traditional sports look like, with practices, tournaments, summer camps, training camps, and then there’s a whole broadcasting element, too, the difference being that there’s not necessarily a big market for youth sports broadcasting, but amateur video game broadcasting has been a massive industry for us.

Nerd Street CEO John Fazio, at “The Block”

CB: One of the things I find fascinating, and I don’t know if you guys feel the same way, but Philadelphia – you’re from this area and you know it’s always been an old school kind of sports town. Our dads or grandfathers tell us stories about Connie Mack Stadium back in the day or whatever. But you had the Overwatch Grand Finals here in 2019. A sold out Met. There’s a new arena being built in South Philly. Is it intriguing how Philadelphia became sort of a ground zero for Esports in the United States?

Fazio: Yeah, and I think it’s a combination of a lot of things. I give Comcast a lot of credit for it. They were a big piece as an accelerator there, both through the Overwatch team (the Fusion) and the Overwatch championships and as an investor in us. I think there’s a pretty long lineage, and while it’s only getting popular now, there are Esports communities in Philadelphia that are 25 years old. They used to organize in bar basements and hung out in arcades. Now they’ve come full fledged into the mainstream here. We had Call of Duty events here ten years ago. There’s a long lineage that is only now becoming mainstream, and that’s exciting for us.

CB: In the press release, it’s noted that JuJu Smith-Schuster and Emmanuel Sanders are involved with you guys. You think about Ben Simmons being a big gamer, and having that gaming room in the house he just put up for sale. It seems younger athletes these days have this love of gaming and seems to provide a natural crossover from traditional sports into Esports. Is there an overlap there? Are kids walking into The Block wearing Flyers and Eagles and Sixers and Phillies gear?

Fazio: Yeah, 100%. It’s hard to be a kid growing up who likes sports and doesn’t play video games. It’s a rarity at this point. We used to joke that we majored in soccer and minored in FIFA. Playing video games is the entertainment, but the reality is that these are competitors. You take Emmanuel Sanders or JuJu, and you can give them a chessboard, and they’ll be competitors. That’s their personality. It doesn’t matter what the medium is. Video games just happen to be super fun and super entertaining, and easier to do physically, so that competitive spirit kind of translates. The kid who repped the eMLS team for the Philadelphia Union for years (Cormac Dooley), he went off to play Division 1 soccer. That’s not uncommon.

The arena, where “championship” events will take place

CB: You’re in the same age range that I am. Sometimes I think about all of the hours I spent playing Goldeneye 007 and the first Starcraft, and now I look at these facilities, and the technology, and the popularity, and I wonder, ‘man if we had this growing up, maybe I’d be on a different career path.

Fazio: I feel that way sometimes. But there are plenty of people my age who are pros, and they did make it with what we had when we were kids. If you played Starcraft, it means you were fortunate enough to have access to a computer and at-home internet, and half of the kids in Philadelphia don’t have that. That’s what’s most exciting for us now, is that we can provide to them what you and I had, because we had upbringings of at least some privilege. Now we can bring that to so many more people and that’s really exciting.

CB: This isn’t a new mission for Nerd Street. I remember driving past your place in Northern Liberties back in the day. Do you ever pause and think about how far you guys have come over this last decade?

Fazio: Yeah, definitely, and walking into the building the first time we ran an event, it hits you a little bit. I had my old Jarvus Innovations partner with me, Chris Alfano, and we came up with the original business plan back in 2005, before the word “Esports” even existed. And then in 2011 we started Nerd Street as a LAN party, which is just a bunch of kids playing video games together. We were just hanging out. It wasn’t until 2016 that we actually incorporated as a company, and built something of it. It’s been a hell of a path here, and while there were grand ambitions from the get go, there were plenty points along that path where we had no idea what was coming.

Gaming stations galore