DuPage Sports Commission Going Bigger for Second Esports Event

In the sports events industry, adaptation and willingness to expand event offerings are crucial to survival for a destination. This has led to a boom in multi-use facilities being built and CVB’s trying outside the box bids to bring more money into their area.

For Igor Bakovic, director of sports at the DuPage Sports Commission in Illinois, a new frontier is esports. Last spring, Bakovic put together the inaugural the Midwest Esports Invitational, which drew 28 collegiate esports teams to Lisle, Illinois as the team navigated the waters of not only putting on a new event in a space that they weren’t necessarily familiar with.

“You can have your plan as well as you can put it together on paper and then when you hit go and you start executing, it never comes out that way,” Bakovic said. “Esports is just on another level because there are so many different pieces to it. You have that whole AV component. You have lighting, you have hardwiring — all the technical stuff that you really have to know or have experts on your team to know.”

Last year’s event included one workshop, three collegiate brackets and a free play area. The PC portion, featuring Valorant and Overwatch 2, were at Scrims Esports Center, which is equipped with 60 PCs. The Smash Bros section took place at a local hotel ballroom.

This year’s event — the Midwest Battleground — will take place February 28 through March 2 at the Sheraton Lisle Naperville and Scrims Esports Center. In addition to the three game titles that return from last year, this year will also see a Rocket League tournament and a bracket for Marvel Rivals. Each main bracket will include a $2,500 prize pool.

“I had a three-month conversation with (the Sheraton) to figure out if we can efficiently, but also cost effectively, put PCs in a ballroom, allowing us to increase the number of teams that we would be able to host and introduce Rocket League as a fourth collegiate title,” Bakovic said. “LANFest is one of our main nonprofit partners in this event and their team is managing the equipment setup and the teardown.”

There’s also an emphasis on the educational component this year as the Midwest Battleground will have three panels.

There’s a panel designed for parents, teachers or anybody curious about esports. There’s a collegiate panel with directors from the schools that are competing, with topics including recruiting and current trends in the esports space. The final panel is geared toward high school esports coaches and how to continue to build successfully.

“We’ve also partnered with an organization called CS4IL — their goal is to get computer science into every Illinois school — to run Minecraft workshops,” Bakovic said. “It’s a great opportunity for parents to come with their kid to learn a little bit more about Minecraft.

“We added a BYOC, which stands for Bring Your Own Computer. We still have a free play area. And then we’ve got the open bracket tournaments that are taking place. Our event is at a larger venue and we have two stages this year. It’s a larger space and we figured out how to put PCs in a ballroom, which is a challenge in most cases.”

The Midwest Battleground will feature a high school component, with 29 high schools from around Illinois competing for the IHSCAA state championship in Smash Bros.

Navigating Early Challenges

Creating an esports event was not a hasty decision for Bakovic, who had been mapping out a course for more than two years.

“I went to the Esports Trade Association conference in 2021 and I was amazed that this whole esports space really exists to this level,” he said. “Then I went to the EsportsTravel Summit in Pittsburgh in December of 2021 and met various people and had lots of conversations and that’s really how this came about.

“It took another almost two years of conversations to try to figure out what we could create that could support the space. And that’s how our event landed.”

Once the idea is cemented, the venues are secured and the sponsors and nonprofits come aboard, there’s then the matter of getting esports teams to come to a new event. As of now, this year’s Midwest Battleground will feature 42 college teams.

“The challenge is that the directors of esports are wearing many hats and at some schools, there just isn’t enough bandwidth to wear that many different hats,” Bakovic said. “Sometimes emails fall through the crack. So that was a challenge this year, getting timely feedback.”

Always an optimist, Bakovic has adjusted his strategy moving forward when it comes to working with collegiate teams.

“I’ve learned that all schools have different budget deadlines — some schools are already working on their budget for spring of 2026,” Bakovic said. “Others don’t start working on their budget until September this year. So I have this massive spreadsheet that I’ve started putting everybody’s information and who’s coming to the event. I’ve added a column in there for budget and I’m putting in the month of year when they start working on their budget for spring of 2026.” 

Keeping Them Coming Back

While the economic impact of an event like the Midwest Battleground is an important facet for the surrounding area, the guest experience is paramount to an event’s continued success.

“We want everybody who comes and competes at our event to have a great time and then share their experience with other schools, because every director has friends and the directors are connected,” Bakovic said. “The hope is that in 2026 we do get close to or at 72 teams and then we continue to expand our presence with IHSCA.”

Another wrinkle this year is the introduction of a “media pass” that each school will receive. The pass allows one individual from each school to capture exclusive content and take photos while they’re at the event, with the purpose of sharing it on social media and tagging DuPage County and the Midwest Battleground.

“We’re trying to connect the collegiate esports space with the high school space and create an opportunity for workshops, education, recruiting, sharing of information about various esports programs from around the country and networking opportunities,” Bakovic said. “There aren’t really many of those types of events that exist to encompass all those things that fit into this ecosystem.”

At the end of the day, Discover DuPage is going to make the majority of its tourism dollars through traditional sports. But that doesn’t mean Bakovic and his team won’t continue to focus time and resources on the esports space.

“We want to be a sports commission that primarily works in traditional sports, who’s also seeing the value of esports and believes in what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We’re giving gamers a lot of different opportunities to network. We’re trying to emulate a little bit more of what that traditional sports model looks like, but also keeping their esports identity.”