Remember that guy who used to post in the comments section as ESPORTS ARE THE FUTURE? Well he may have only been partially right.

From Kevin Hitt at the Sports Business Journal:

Comcast Spectacor isn’t ditching esports in Philadelphia, but Sports Business Journal has confirmed that the group is reimagining its initial arena plan.

A company spokesperson has cleared up information regarding the possible scrapping of Fusion Arena, after a tweet surfaced today from an Associated Press reporter. However, after speaking with Comcast Spectacor, Sports Business Journal has learned that the arena isn’t being scrapped; it’s being re-imagined as a multi-use facility.

That’s interesting. If you went down to the sports complex to see the Sixers or Flyers play in February or March of 2020, right before COVID hit, you saw fencing that blocked off parts of Xfinity Live from the rest of the Wells Fargo Center parking lot. That’s the arena site, and the original plans called for a 3,500 capacity joint to host Overwatch League games and other eSports competitions. Comcast broke ground on the $50 million dollar building in September of 2019 and planned to begin construction in Q1, 2020, but Joe Marsh, who is T1 CEO and former Chief Business Officer of Comcast Specator’s Gaming division, said a mandate from Governor Wolf put a halt to construction projects in Pennsylvania.

Marsh:

“In March, we were going to start doing the digging, some of the moving over of the things on Xfinity Live property, like the retention basin, where the (miniature) football field is. We were just going to move that over to the left side of the bar area. We got the fence up, and by the time we put the fence up, we couldn’t get going. The original plan was to have steel coming out of the ground in July, which is the heart of baseball season. You would have been able to see some of the building in July, but now we’re a little bit delayed on that. We keep having weekly calls with our architects and our construction team and we’re just figuring out when we’re gonna be able to get going again. It just depends on how long the work-from-home and no construction is allowed to go on. We’re in a bit of a holding pattern based on the Governor’s guideline.”

Hitt goes on to say in his story that the venue will be multi-purpose instead:

“…now it appears that Fusion Arena will be turned into a multi-use space that will host esports, but will also be geared toward other activities such as concerts, comedy tours and seminars. The arena was proposed for the Philadelphia Sports Complex next to Xfinity Live!, a food and entertainment complex. And while the entertainment space may still be built, esports will not be the main ingredient.”

Makes sense, I guess. You can use the space for a variety of things and still put the Fusion in there if you want. 3,500 to 4,500 is a good medium-sized venue for concerts. Bigger than the TLA and Union Transfer, maybe on par with The Met, but not as big as whatever the Camden place is now called. This seems like a good idea and it’s interesting to think that if COVID never happened, the Arena may already have been finished in its original form.

Here are some photos from the groundbreaking and renderings of the arena, going back to 2019 (courtesy Comcast Spectacor) –