The UK has the smallest houses in Europe, with them being just 76 square meters on average, considerably less than Spain's 97m², France's 113m² and Denmark's 137m². Sporting nearly three times the space are American homes, which boast 214m² of space. However, even American households will have a hard time accommodating a 412m² TV screen, which is what attendants of ESL One Frankfurt will be watching Dota 2 on.

Making the transition from football pitch to massive stage is no easy feat. First, to protect the pitch the entire field has to be completely covered with tiles, a process taking over a day to complete. Next, the stadium team brings in trucks and cranes to set up the stage and scaffolding for the massive screen. The scaffolding set up in the western section is over 50m high and allows the entire bottom section of the stadium to be used for seating. Naturally, this shift also brings with it an increase in spectator capacity.

While traditional sports can be viewed from one perspective regardless of your location in the stadium, due to the nature of eSports events, some spectators have to deal with a limited field of view, with broadcasts for many eSports titles only showing one part of a much larger arena. Maybe one day we’ll be able to set up holograms on the pitch to represent the whole field, but until then we’ll need to use gigantic screens like this 412m² one:

For the less metrically inclined, the screen for ESL One Frankfurt is 1352 square feet. As you can see from the photo, it’s actually made up of 320 interlocking LED panels. These panels are huge as well, with each one larger than a banquet table and weighing hundreds of pounds. Setting the screen up takes the better part of a day as the team has to install each and every one of the 320 LED panels individually.

The process may sound daunting, but it’s well worth it. The finished product is a gigantic screen that looks crisp from anywhere in the stadium, so no one should have any issues catching every skill shot from any seat in the stadium.

The Commerzbank-Arena has an interesting history. It was erected in the same spot as the historic Frankfurt Waldstadion, known in 1925 as “Germany’s finest sports facility”. Over the course of the twentieth century, the Waldstadion went through many radical shifts, including two renamings within a decade. In 1935, the stadium was renamed “Sportfield”, before then having been renamed again in 1945 when US forces dubbed the arena “Victory Stadium” and used it to play American Football.
 

The stadium went through its first reconstruction after a massive event that caused 200 injuries due to overcrowding. Reopening in 1955, the new stadium then had a capacity of 87,000 people. Among other accolades, the Waldstadion held the first post-war German gymnastics festival in 1948, the 1966 Boxing World Championship Match between Muhammad Ali and Karl Mildenberger, and the 1974 Fifa World Cup. In preparation for the 2006 Fifa World Cup, The Waldstadion was rebuilt from the ground up as the Commerzbank-Arena. The reconstruction began in 2002 and was done in phases. As each part of the Waldstadion was demolished, more of the Commerzbank-Arena took its place, allowing the stadium to continue to operate throughout most of the reconstruction.
 

Now, this legendary stadium will soon be home to ESL One Frankfurt, becoming the largest venue used for an eSports event to date.

The top Dota 2 teams in the world will soon be facing off at the Commerzbank-Arena, and if you want to be a part of this momentous occasion, it’s not too late to grab some tickets over at ESL-One.com. Additionally, if you’re not sure what else to do while you’re in Frankfurt, why not check out our handy article on what to do in Frankfurt?

All images graciously provided by the Commerzbank-Arena staff