Gaming at the Royal Albert Hall?

A tournament with a $250k prize pool?

I was at the Royal Albert Hall on Easter Monday watching the first ever esports event held at that iconic venue, the finals of Red Bull Wololo: Londinium. A major international esports event centred on the classic strategy game Age of Empires (II and IV) with the world’s top players competing for a share of the $250,000 prize pool.

The finals at the Royal Albert Hall were the conclusion of an event which had seen previous rounds held at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in Shoreditch and the Odeon Luxe in Leicester Square. The sold-out final saw the arena packed for the final of the main event, the Age of Empires II final between players Hera, and Liereyy, with a live 60-piece orchestra and 3,000 fans in attendance (and a further 115,000 watching online on either Twitch or YouTube).

All this for a game (Age of Empires II) that originally came out in 1999, making it older than most of our audit staff! It’s had two remasters since its original release, first the HD edition in 2013, followed by the game that was the feature of this event, the Definitive Edition, that was released to widespread acclaim in the community in 2019. A game that I have sunk an inordinate number of hours into over the last couple of years.

This was the biggest tournament and highest viewing numbers in the game’s history and at the arena I met fans from all over the world and at a wide variety of age ranges, from couples who play together to families where the game has been passed down the generations, all enjoying watching the best players in the world duke it out in a best of nine match that had drama, long-drawn battles, and vociferous applause from the audience at what they were witnessing.

In short, it was a massive event for not only Age of Empires, but the gaming community at large, filling the iconic Royal Albert Hall and seeing fans descend on London from all over the world to unite in their passion for a 27-year-old game that is still going strong today.

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