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AbacusGames

Honour of Kings Champion Cup gets first e-sports live audience in China since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic

  • Honour of Kings World Champion Cup 2020 only released 2,000 tickets for a stadium with a capacity of 19,000
  • It was the was the first major e-sports event to get a live audience in China this year while most international events still face delays

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The Honour of Kings World Champion Cup 2020 has a sparse audience at Beijing's Wukesong Arena on August 16 thanks to strict controls because of the coronavirus. Photo: Tencent
Xinmei Shen

After going more than half a year without attending live games, e-sports fans in China were finally able to show up in person to the finals of one of the country's most popular tournaments.

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The Honour of Kings World Champion Cup 2020 finals took place in front of a live audience in Beijing on Sunday. It was the first e-sports event with a live audience since the coronavirus outbreak spread across the country in January.
Attendees had to pass temperature checks and present their health codes before entering the event. Photo: Tencent
Attendees had to pass temperature checks and present their health codes before entering the event. Photo: Tencent

Thousands of people showed up to Wukesong Arena to see Dynamite Gaming defeat Turnso Gaming. Beijing held the championship and two e-sports conferences over the weekend as part of a government initiative to boost the city’s e-sports industry.

Fans were apparently eager to finally be able to watch e-sports live again, with tickets reportedly selling out within just eight minutes. But there was also another reason for this: You had to be a super fan to be allowed to buy a ticket in the first place.

Beijing was taking strong precautions to guard against the Covid-19 pandemic for the event. The city faced a second wave of Covid-19 cases in June, which resulted in 335 new cases at the time.

Part of these controls meant only letting Honour of Kings players purchase a ticket if they had a level 30 account – the highest achievable in the game. They also had to register with their real names and pass a screening from Beijing’s health code system, which is meant to measure someone’s level of risk of having contracted the virus. Once they showed up, attendees had to present a national ID card and pass a temperature check to be allowed into the stadium.

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