BIG C will open in Barcelona the largest eSports center in Southern Europe

Barcelona will have the largest center in southern Europe to compete in video games and eSports. This is the expansion of the BIG C Barcelona project, a high-performance center in digital entertainment located in the 22@ district, which will expand its facilities to a space of more than 7,000 m².

The project has been supported by ACCIÓ-Catalonia Trade & Investment, the Catalan Government agency for foreign investment and business competitiveness, Barcelona City Council (City Promotion Department), and Barcelona Activa.

The new space, which will be inaugurated in June, aims to position itself as the high-performance center of reference in the field of video games in Europe. It will have areas dedicated to competition and other sports equipment focused on training and rest aimed at professionals in this field, including players, referees, physiotherapists, and coaches.

Roger Torrent, the Minister of Business and Labour, emphasizes that this project is "a new example of the success that positions Catalonia, and Barcelona in particular, as a first-rate hub in the field of video games and digital entertainment, a sector that has experienced exponential growth in recent years and will surely continue to develop in the future". For Torrent, the video games industry "has a high potential for attracting qualified talent and perfectly combines key elements of our economy, such as technology, innovation, and creativity, which are drivers for the rest of our business fabric.".

For his part, the founder and CEO of BIG C, Jean-Sébastien Ventura, assures that "video games are one of the most powerful industries in the world, a driver of economic transformation" and that, with this expansion project, "Barcelona will now have an international center of attention for innovation and new formats in such an emblematic location as the 22@ district". Furthermore, Ventura states, "It is an opportunity for high competition and, above all, to motivate the training of boys and girls, and young people in the exciting world of video games and eSports".

BIG C, which opened its doors in Barcelona in 2019 and until now had an area of 1,900m², will also have several facilities dedicated to digital entertainment, including spaces for learning and training to promote specialized talent in the video game industry and the audiovisual sector. In addition, the new center will encourage activities aimed at children and include a space dedicated to celebrating events and shows in the entertainment field.

Catalonia, the capital of video games in Europe

According to a study by ACCIÓ-Catalonia Trade & Investment, 'Video games in Catalonia', Catalonia is the first European Union region to attract foreign investment in the video game sector. Specifically, in the last five years, Catalonia has attracted 20 new foreign investment projects from international video game studios, involving an investment of around 120 million euros and the creation of almost 900 jobs. The main investor countries in this period (2017-2021) have been the United States, France, Sweden, and South Korea.

Thus, Catalonia has attracted 12.2% of the foreign investment destined for the entire European Union during this five years period and is the leading EU region in terms of both the number of projects and the volume of investment in the video game sector, ahead of Amsterdam region (West Netherlands), Ireland, Sweden and the Bordeaux and Paris regions of France. At the same time, Catalonia is the second region in the EU in terms of the number of jobs created with these foreign investment projects.

Big C's project joins recent public investments made by foreign companies in the video game sector, such as FunPlus (Switzerland), IO Interactive (Denmark), and Rovio (Finland).