TRANMERE Rovers will be holding a public open day on Saturday, December 10 to highlight the club’s new esports facility.

The new area, based at Prenton Park’s Recreation Centre, is the only of its kind in Merseyside and will include six state of the art gaming computers accompanied with professional monitors and streaming equipment.

The equipment will be used across the esports branch of the club for competitive gaming, recreational use and educational qualification courses, including a BTEC course in esports, which will build students’ skills in a broad spectrum of abilities, including digital marketing, graphics and production.

Esports were included as a pilot event at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, and according to recent figures, the number of adults in Britain who say they watch esports and other competitive gaming events stands at more than 1.2m, with esports contributing more than £111.5m to the UK’s GDP each year.

Supporters and the general public are invited to join Rovers on the day to take part in various esports tournaments with prizes to be won as well as free refreshments.

Tranmere Rovers vice chairman, Nicola Palios, said: “It’s about engaging young people and creating skills.

“We also want to do things that bring a genuine benefit to the community and esports seems to be one area where we could combine all of them.

“The dedicated esports facility would be by far the most specialist centre in the north west of England.

“My first reaction to it before I really looked into it in any detail was ‘what’s the attraction of watching somebody else play a game’ but then somebody said to me ‘what do you think you’re doing on a Saturday afternoon?”

“I’m not playing football on a Saturday afternoon, I’m watching somebody else do it, who is much better than me.

“Young people have grown up with this culture of watching people play esports at the top level and I think we’ve got an exciting opportunity to engage with people who just want to watch and learn and use it as a form of recreation.”