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ALGS Championship 2023, the premier Apex Legends Global Series esports event, will now take place in Birmingham instead of London.
Esports News UK first learnt of this news a few months ago, but the venue was not confirmed from enough sources to run an article. Today, EA has announced all the key information for the $2m event, plus they gave us an interview to dive into the details further.
The news comes as DarkZero won the ALGS Split 2 Playoffs event in London today.
ALGS Championship 2023 key info: Date, venue and tickets
The ALGS Championship 2023 will take place from September 6th to 10th 2023 at Resorts World Arena in Birmingham (pictured above).
This venue is right next to the Birmingham NEC, where Insomnia Gaming Festival is held twice a year.
Note that this is the Resorts World Arena, a separate facility to Resorts World entertainment complex that has a casino and restaurants in, located next door.
This year, Insomnia i71 will take place at the same time as ALGS, as i71 runs from September 7th to 10th. However, EA told us “it’s a happy coincidence” that both events are taking place at the same time.
Tickets for the ALGS Championship 2023 will go on sale on Friday July 21st at 4pm BST (8am PST).
Two ALGS events have taken place in the UK this year (at the Copper Box Arena in London): the Split 1 Playoffs, and the Split 2 Playoffs, which concluded today.
The Copper Box Arena has seating of around 7,500, while Resorts World Arena has a capacity of 15,685. So it’s just over twice the seating capacity of the Copper Box.
However, EA hasn’t utilised the full seating capacity of the Copper Box for various reasons – there are 60 players that need to play on stage at once, for example.
Insomnia has of course played host to esports events over the years. Alongside the BYOC Opens it’s hosted bigger events, like Call of Duty CWL Birmingham in 2018 and the TF2 Finals and more. Birmingham has also hosted the Dota 2 ESL One at Arena Birmingham in 2018 and 2019, not to mention Birmingham Salvo winning the old Championship Gaming Series back in 2008.
EA first announced last December that three ALGS events would be held in London in 2023.
Some sources told Esports News UK the decision to move the third event to Birmingham was made at the start of 2023, but EA has decided to announce it now. We asked them about this and the ALGS Championship 2023, and they provided answers in our interview below.
Following the announcement, a spokesperson for GLL, the charitable social enterprise which operates Better (the Copper Box Arena operator and charitable enterprise), said: “The 2023 Apex Legends Global Series hosted at the Copper Box was hugely successful and the feedback we received from both organisers and visitors was wholly positive.
“We have developed a strong working relationship with EA and look forward to building on this in the future. We have held Apex Legends twice already this year and look forward to welcoming them back in the future.”
EA interview on ALGS Championship 2023 in Birmingham: ‘This is going to be the best Apex Legends LAN event yet’
Dom Sacco and Hannah Marie of Esports News UK speak with EA’s Jasmine Chiang, Global Sr. Brand Marketing Manager, Apex Legends Esports (pictured below, left) and Monica Dinsmore, Senior Director, Esports Brand & Marketing (right)
Dom Sacco, Esports News UK: Will the ALGS Championship 2023 event be a part of Insomnia Gaming Festival?
Monica Dinsmore, EA: It was a happy coincidence. We were like, ‘ooh, this could be a really awesome opportunity to just create one of the biggest gaming moments in the UK’. It’s going to be massive.
Jasmine Chiang, EA: I think it’ll be an awesome opportunity for all fans to maybe experience something new.
Update (July 17th): Since transcribing this interview, EA published a press release implying the ALGS Championships 2023 coming to Birmingham alongside Insomnia was more than ‘a happy coincidence’.
The press release read: “The ALGS Year 3 Championship will take place alongside Insomnia Gaming Festival, the UK’s largest gaming festival, further building on the UK’s growing stature as an international gaming destination. More details on cross-collaborations between the ALGS Year 3 Championship and Insomnia will be announced in the coming weeks.”
Dom Sacco: What can we expect in terms of size and setup compared to the Copper Box Arena?
Monica Dinsmore: Seating and capacity is a logistics game that I don’t know how to play (laughs), so I leave that to the experts. But the reason for going to Resorts World is to capitalise on the momentum we’re seeing and make sure we’re able to offer more space, more capacity, and more opportunity to engage. So it’s a bit of an upgrade from the opportunity here at the Copper Box.
We’re looking at where we’ve come from the course of the last year. We were sold out today (at ALGS Split 2 Playoffs finals day, Sunday July 16th 2023). We want to provide more opportunity to do stuff like that, so we think that will be exactly that for us.
Jasmine Chiang: It feels like Resorts World has the space for us to do all these things that we wanted to. ALGS is built on our community. So the team merch booths upstairs and sponsor activations, the meet and greets, we want to take that and blow it up and do even more at Champs.
Monica Dinsmore: A festival of all things Apex.
Dom Sacco: Will there be any different ticketing options for meet and greets at ALGS Championship 2023, and things like that?
Monica Dinsmore: I think we have to work that out still, in terms of what the ticketing strategy looks like and the different opportunities for fans to engage. But we’ll definitely be putting together some pretty awesome experiences.
Dom Sacco: It is a big space. You have the outside area, the lake by the NEC, there are opportunities for some outdoor activations.
Monica Dinsmore: That’s kind of the idea. That it hits you in the face when you get off the train (laughs).
Hannah Marie, Esports News UK: Get some Nerf guns, make a shooting range!
Monica Dinsmore: There you go! And Nessie will fly at you!
Hannah Marie: Maybe have a massive blow-up Nessie floating in the lake.
Monica Dinsmore: You could take a ride in it. You’re hired! (laughter)
Dom Sacco [to Hannah]: You should be charging consultancy fees for this!
Monica Dinsmore: This is all not official, but great ideas!
“It feels like Resorts World has the space for us to do all these things that we wanted to. ALGS is built on our community. So the team merch booths upstairs and sponsor activations, the meet and greets, we want to take that and blow it up and do even more at Champs.”
Jasmine Chiang, EA, on ALGS Championship 2023
Hannah Marie: Can we expect any changes to the accessibility of the teams and the players? One of the things that’s important to Apex fans is that it’s not like other esports where players are behind closed doors and no one can meet them. It’d change the experience a lot if fans had to pay extra for meet and greets.
Monica Dinsmore: I want to make sure we are not talking about tiered level experiences at this moment, we’re just talking about opportunities for more. When we talk about ticketing strategies, I hope that’s not what you took from that. We don’t know what the ticketing strategy is, but we hope to offer as many awesome experiences for our fans as possible – not connected.
Hannah Marie: It might be trickier for fans travelling into Birmingham from abroad too. We had one superfan driving for 20 days from China to London to get to ALGS London. We have a lot of fans from America and China, and getting to Birmingham may complicate things. Is there going to be any additional guidance or help from EA?
Monica Dinsmore: It’s my experience that getting around the UK in terms of trains is so much better and easier [than America]! And by the way, we’re kind of out of the way here in Stratford too. We’ll provide ‘know before you go’ and a lot of information for fans on how they’re going to navigate.
The area around the NEC is a huge activation space for all kinds of different conferences. They’ve had some really awesome esports events in that space, so we think that fans will be able to figure it out, and we’ll have the help from those venues. We’ll give them all the information they need to make their decisions.
Dom Sacco: What’s it been like having ALGS events in the UK, in London, this year?
Jasmine Chiang: It’s been awesome. Part of the decision making behind London was the Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) is truly global, there are fans around the world watching. And there’s no such thing as a perfect time that works for the entire world, but we really felt that London was the closest to a universally acceptable time for our fans that’d work, so that influenced our decision as well.
Monica Dinsmore: We think about ease of access and things like that and how we can get players here, that plays into it as well. It’s about having the best ways to accommodate all of our players to arrive here and play their best, so that goes into the decision for sure. The idea is we keep getting better – each experience should be better than the last.
Dom Sacco: What can we expect from the stage setup in Birmingham? Will it be a similar viewing experience to London’s Copper Box Arena?
Monica Dinsmore: I think stage design is one of the most complicated things and I’m not that professional [when it comes to it]! There are people in that space that are smarter than me and are gonna build an amazing stage. The obviously went and did their due diligence and chose what they felt like was going to be the best step up for us to make Champs the best event that we’ve ever had.
Dom Sacco: Will you be working with Esports Engine on this event like you have done with the other London ALGS events?
PR: We’ll share more details in the coming weeks, I think the team is still preparing for that.
Hannah Marie: I’ve heard this decision [to move ALGS Championship 2023 from London to Birmingham] was in the works since Split 1. Was there a reason why it’s taken until now to make it official?
Monica Dinsmore: You never want to go out with a definitive piece of information until it’s definitive. If you don’t have all your Is dotted and Ts crossed and everything lined up and signed. You don’t want to tell people it’s happening until you’re absolutely sure it’s happening. Certainly, we as part of the community and folks that plan these events, would love to be able to announce next year’s events.
As we test and learn, listen to our fans, evolve our programs in order to make sure our community has the best experience possible, we’re out there trying to make sure we’re making those decisions with that in mind, and as early as possible. We feel the pain you’re expressing and want to go out with all the info as soon as possible every single time. ‘As soon as possible’ is key, we’re going out with information as soon as possible.
“The reason for going to Resorts World is to capitalise on the momentum we’re seeing and make sure we’re able to offer more space, more capacity, and more opportunity to engage. So it’s a bit of an upgrade from the opportunity here at the Copper Box.”
Monica Dinsmore, EA, on ALGS Championship 2023
Dom Sacco: There’s a lot of hype building EA Sports FC at the moment and I’m interested to hear if we can expect to see more esports events around that in the UK and beyond, and any comments you can make around that.
Monica Dinsmore: I’m here to talk about ALGS but I also work on EA Sports FC, so we can connect outside of this on that. I’m heavily involved in the FC launch and I’m happily to talk about it when we’re able to focus.
Dom Sacco: Thanks for your time and for talking to us today. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Jasmine Chiang: I’ve been to every single Apex Legends LAN event to date, and I really think the ALGS Championship 2023 event is going to be the best one yet.
Related article: UK esports orgs exit Apex Legends ALGS Split 2 Playoffs
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
