Following the tragic mass shooting at a Madden NFL esports tournament in Jacksonville, Florida today, Evolution Championship Series (EVO) boss, Joey Cuellar, has commented about security changes going forward for EVO tournaments.
In an official statement released on Cuellar’s personal Twitter account, the co-founder noted that prior to the shooting, EVO had already began to increase security measures, and going forward, will have metal detectors installed.
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While Evo does not comment on security procedures (for obvious reasons), it’s very clear that we need to be more proactive for 2019 and beyond. The amount of undercover law enforcement at Evo was unprecedented, and we will be installing metal detectors for ALL days next year.
— Joey Cuellar (@MrWiz) August 26, 2018
As alluded to previously, EVO has been tightening security measures over the past few years as its events grow in size and popularity.
Founded back in 1996, early EVO tournaments were not only drastically much smaller in scale, but had virtually no security in place. But as the tournaments got bigger, the demand for security grew.
And now with today’s events, all eyes will be on similar esport tournaments and how they will handle security. It appears EVO isn’t going to be taking any chances. Even just this year it had a much larger police presence than ever before — something many fans were very receptive towards — and that’s likely only going to increase going forward.
As you may know, EVO had its own shooter scare earlier this year when a mass shooting was threatened over Twitch chat. At the time, the FBI was alerted of the situation, but fortunately, nothing ever came of said threats.
In addition to the likes of EVO, many are also wondering how the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), PAX, and other gaming conventions will respond. At the moment of writing this, there’s been no official statement from any of these companies.
For those behind on today’s tragic shooting in Jacksonville, here’s a catch up on everything we know so far.
We will continue to update this article with further comments from Cuellar or any other EVO representatives.
