JACKSONVILLE, Fla \u2014 Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan and officials from the City of Jacksonville and the University of North Florida came together at UNF\u2019s Student Union to cut the ribbon on the Flight Deck Esports & Innovation Arena.<\/p>\n
The over 2,800-square-foot facility features 42 high-performance stations, a 10-seat competition stage for tournament play, a broadcast studio for streaming, shoutcasting, and content production, and a console play zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur esports facility is a career launching pad and a magnet that anchors students to UNF,\u201d said Tom Screech, the esports program manager at UNF. \u201cWe\u2019re building it in a thoughtful way, with the goal of being the most successful program in the state, so when people look around they\u2019ll say, \u2018UNF is doing it right, and that\u2019s where you should go.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an economic and workforce development effort. It is about investing in the human capital and the future of economy. Creating jobs, developing skills, and nurturing a rising esports industry that can diversify a region\u2019s economy in a big, big way,\u201d said Mayor Deegan. <\/p>\n
Following the grand opening, the university announced several competitions set to take place at the UNF Flight Deck:<\/p>\n
March 7: Duval Kart Clash – A countywide Mario Kart 8\u2122 tournament open to all high school students.April 10: GeoGuesser Tournament – In partnership with the World Affairs Council Jacksonville, this video game event for more than 50 high school students drops the player into a random place on Google Earth and ask them to pinpoint where they are on the globe.April 11-12: Osprey Overwatch Invitational – A collegiate Overwatch 2\u2122 tournament featuring competitive teams from Florida colleges and universities competing against each other.July: National Association of Collegiate Esports – The largest association of Varsity College Esports professionals in the USA is hosting their annual convention at UNF with more than 200 attendees.<\/p>\n
You can find out about upcoming tournaments on the university\u2019s website<\/a>. <\/p>\n Some in the community oppose the idea of investing in esports because it involves video games, which some view as \u201cchildish.\u201d Mayor Deegan said, \u201cAll you have to do is take a quick look into the esports industry to know it\u2019s not just video games. This is a wonderful way to engage young people in an industry that is going to bring billions of dollars into the economy. Anyone who says that has not been paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLook around, look at where the economy is, right? Whether people are on social media, whether they\u2019re looking at AI, the technical and electronic, and future systems and technologies are going to drive where jobs go. And if Jacksonville has, essentially, a workforce development tool like this, with a premier institution like UNF being a part of it, this is how we make sure that we are the number one stop for new industries and new development technologies to come to,\u201d said Councilmember Jimmy Peluso.<\/p>\n \u201cEsports teaches you STEM skills that are coding, programming, things applicable to the future of our workforce and industry. Just look at, kind of the mark that AI is making all across industries in the United States and the world. This just reinforces Jacksonville as a wonderful place to live, work, and play,\u201d Councilmember Nick Howland.<\/p>\n \u25b6 Listen to Jacksonville\u2019s Morning News Interviews<\/a><\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download our free news, weather and traffic app. And click here<\/a> to subscribe to our daily 3 Big Things newsletter.<\/p>\n \u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla \u2014 Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan and officials from the City of Jacksonville and the University of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[796,794,50566,28,116,118,117,795,349,43382,9939,81830,5908],"class_list":["post-172696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-796","tag-duval","tag-esports","tag-florida","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-ne-florida","tag-northeast-florida","tag-ospreys","tag-unf","tag-unf-esports","tag-university-of-north-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}