N3rd Street Gamers to open an esports hub in California

In partnership with Southern California-based esports company Ultimate Media Ventures (UMV), Philly’s N3rd Street Gamers will open an esports hub inside UMV’s 22,000-square-foot headquarters in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Slated to open next month, Localhost Battleground will host competitive gaming events, solo tournaments, team-based tournaments and esports boot camps, in keeping with the Northern Liberties company’ mission of developing the “next generation” of esports talent.

The proposed space, which will entice gamers with access to pro-grade gaming equipment, is the third such hub N3rd Street Gamers is launching in the U.S. In addition to its original NoLibs location, last year it opened an 18,000-square-foot hive in Denver. This marks the company’s first entry into California, a global hotbed of gaming that also houses the country’s first esports arena and Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch League.

“Bringing Localhost to Southern California allows us to produce more frequent events for the National Championship Series and extends our reach to the West Coast,” said Ryan Barr, COO at NSG. “Localhost Battleground at Ultimate Media Ventures will allow us to host more recurring, standardized opportunities for players to earn NCS points, prizes, and support for travel to our competitions.”

In February, N3rd Street Gamers raised $2.57 million in funding towards its Series A round from previous investors Comcast Spectacor and SeventySix Capital.

“We are excited to keep pushing and innovating our esports and gaming communities by bringing them activations and experiences with our partner, N3rd Street Gamers,” said Jon Bukosky, the CEO and founder of UMV. “The ‘Battleground’ concept is the first of many collaborations between our two companies you will see rolling out across North America in 2019 and 2020.”

No immediate details on the financial terms of the partnership between the two companies was made available, but Director of Communications James Love told Technical.ly the value of the partnership with UMV was in the seven-figure range.