予算5000万円！東京都が主催したeスポーツイベント「東京eスポーツフェスタ」で感じた行政×eスポーツの可能性

Tokyo eSports Festa, an e-sports event organized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, was held at Tokyo Big Sight from January 11.

The de facto standard for e-sports events organized by local governments is to plan and execute the event with zero budget and gather sponsors, but this was an unprecedented event that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government budgeted more than 50 million JPY to execute.

In fact, Tokyo is not the first local government to allocate a budget for e-sports.
Kanazawa City in Ishikawa Prefecture in Hokuriku, an advanced e-sports area, has been working to make e-sports a local industry as of 2018, and has set a budget of 1.2 million JPY per month (at the time) for "e-sports utilization study expenses".

The Funglr Games website was launched in October 2018 (full-scale operation will begin around April 2019), and our first article also covers the e-sports situation in Ishikawa and Toyama prefectures.

The fact that Kanazawa City had budgeted for the project had such a big impact, and was also the reason why we started Funglr Games.
As a side note, we also provided the photos we took for Clubism, a publication of Kanazawa Club Co.

Ishikawa and Toyama Prefectures Aiming to be at the Forefront of esports

A record 50 million JPY of Tokyo's taxpayers' money was spent on games.

The budget may not sound like much, but the money is taxpayers' money.
In a so-called "regional" municipality like Kanazawa City, a budget of around 1 million yen would be enough to gain the understanding of the local citizens for a variety of initiatives to revitalize the local community.

However, 50 million yen is a figure that will have a large impact on the people of Tokyo. Whether one considers it a small amount or a large amount depends on one's impression, but since there have been no examples in the past, I think it is safe to conclude that it is a large amount.

If you say, "We can't do it because there are no examples, then we can't do anything." In particular, there are many cases in which local governments are interested in e-sports and want to make efforts in e-sports, but are unable to set up budgets for it.

The "Tokyo eSports Festa", for which the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has allocated a budget of 50 million JPY, will be a tailwind not only for local governments, but also for companies.

Many corporate booths exhibited not only e-sports tournaments

Now, it is time for me to report on the event.
To be honest, I did not cover the matches of the game titles used in the "Tokyo eSports Festa" this time.

(I did watch the Pokemon GO final, which I will report on separately.)

So what did we cover? I could not visit all of them in detail, but I would like to introduce some of the booths that caught my attention.

太鼓の達人 Nintendo Switchば～じょん！ — Taiko Drum Master Nintendo Switch version!

The "Taiko Drum Master Nintendo Switch version!", which was chosen as the title of the event.

Members of "G-STAR Gaming", a familiar face at e-sports events.
They were introduced on Twitter at each company's booth on the day of the event.

The highlight event of the first day

The finals of the "Pokemon GO" Get & Battle Tournament have begun.
(A report on the finals will be posted separately.)
I would like to report more about each company's booth, but I will report on the booths that caught my attention individually.

While it is difficult for e-sports tournaments to monetize participation fees and prize money, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government budgeted for the event, and corporate booths were able to exhibit at a reasonable price.
In the future, if corporate booths can support tournament operations, even when hosted by private companies, the possibilities will continue to expand.