Setup is where everything starts to come together. During this step, the equipment is set up, tested, and used for practice in preparation for the event. Depending on the scope of your event, this could either happen days in advance of the main event or on the morning of. Typically, you’ll want as much time as possible to make sure everything is functioning as expected and address any problems that may arise.
As with most parts of planning live events, every single one will differ with regards to what needs to be accomplished during setup and when. Here is a list of milestones you should look to achieve during your setup:
Setup Furnishings: Do your players need tables to play at? Do your admins need a desk to monitor the event from? Does your production team need a separate room to work out of?
Setup Hardware: If you are providing the computers for the event, make sure to set them up early, so you can get to the testing phase.
Setup Software: Same thing as above: if you are supplying the computers, you’ll need to make sure they are properly equipped with the right software for play or production.
Dress Rehearsal: Once everything is completely put together, it’s time to test everything. Be sure to get games going to test the computers, and provide time for your broadcast team to test run their show to check for quality and issues. Now would also be a good time for the publicity team to test out their workflow and make sure everyone understands their roles.
Reflection and Updates: After all the testing has concluded, be sure to hold another meeting to discuss potential issues, work out solutions to those issues, and make sure everyone is on the same page with any changes that have been implemented.
It’s the day of the event and the competitors are minutes away from arriving. While it may be too late to enact major changes to the gameplan, there is still plenty we can do at this stage to streamline the rest of the event and prepare ourselves, our competitors, and our viewers for the competition to come.
Prepare Schedules: As players and spectators arrive they will have plenty of questions, the main one being the classic, “When are we starting?” Instead of spending the time to personally explain to each attendee the overall structure of the day, it can be a lifesaver to prepare some documents ahead of time to hand out to people as they come in.
Identification: Depending on the scope of your event, there might be a large number of participants, making it hard to identify who is who and who’s a player, staff member, or a spectator. For these reasons, it may be worth creating identifiers for the attendees to wear during the event to streamline these issues. Lanyards and badges are some of the most common methods of doing this, along with giving your participants a momento to take home.
Communicate: Whenever there are changes to the plan, announce them. Communication is a key tool to prevent the chaos of confusion at your event. Be sure to establish channels of communication where teams should expect to hear about these changes and updates.
Player Practice: Once players arrive, they aren’t going to want to sit on their hands until game time. If at all possible, find ways for them to prepare for the matches, whether that means letting them warm up on the competition computers, or providing them some way to mentally prepare for their matches. A busy competitor is a happy competitor.
Fan Engagement: As your players start to arrive, so will your spectators. The mantra of “a busy competitor is a happy competitor” can also apply to your spectators. Be sure they have something to do; a personal favorite is the sign creation station, where you provide resources for the viewer to make their own signs for the event.
It’s showtime. The players are here, the fans are seated, and the games are ready to begin. All of our work and planning has been in preparation for this. If you’ve followed along to this point, actually running the event will mostly be comprised of following the plans you’ve laid out before. Here are a few additional considerations when putting those plans into action.
Communicate: Keep each of your competitors and staff members informed if anything deviates from the original plan.
Be Flexible: If you run into difficulties, don’t be afraid to change the plan. Do whatever works best for your situation.
Accommodate: Work with the competitors, be sure to listen to any concerns or suggestions they have, and properly converse solutions with them.
The matches are over, the prizes have been won, and the broadcast has been wrapped. While not the most glamorous aspect of event production, teardown is what happens once the event is over and it is no less important to plan for than setup. Far too often, production teams spend so much time planning set-up and then arrive at teardown with no plan and a multitude of headaches. Here are a few things to consider when putting your Teardown plan together:
Progressively Teardown: Take some of the load off by packing up equipment when it is no longer needed. If only 10 computers are needed for the finals, then pack the rest up when they’re not needed.
Set an Order: Decide beforehand what aspects need to be deconstructed first. Do we teardown the network before the power?
Know What Goes Where: Establish a plan beforehand as to what equipment needs to be returned to what locations.
Get Everyone Involved: Teardown is a lot of work with little glamour. Some people will want to do whatever they can to avoid doing this physical labor. Encourage everyone to contribute and make sure each of them has individual responsibilities to make the work go by quicker.
It’s been a long journey, but if you’ve been following along you just completed producing your first esports event. It’s a long journey, so please take some time to celebrate with your event team. Once all the celebrations have concluded, host a final meeting with the rest of the team to reflect on the entire process. Compile a list of lessons learned from this event that you’d want to carry forward into future projects.