Long Beach City College (LBCC) opened a new esports facility at its Liberal Arts Campus, featuring Extron’s AV control systems and NAV Pro AV over IP technology for seamless switching and content distribution. The purpose-built space supports LBCC’s competitive esports program with upgraded equipment and infrastructure designed for both gameplay and broadcast.
The gaming floor includes 47 Alienware gaming stations, while five mobile coach stations allow staff to plug into Extron connection boxes to monitor and support players. A shoutcaster booth features twin 65-inch flat panels for real-time production and commentary.
The facility was designed and built by HPI Architecture, P2S Engineering, and EKC Enterprises, Inc., in collaboration with Extron and LBCC’s Multimedia Technologies department. It replaces a previously borrowed space at a local high school, giving LBCC’s championship-winning esports team a dedicated home.
“Extron’s AV control system design for the esports facility met our requirement to keep things intuitive for users,” said Chris Greenwood, project manager of Educational & Multimedia Technologies at Long Beach City College. “The TouchLink Pro touchpanel GUIs show clickable room maps of gaming stations and video displays, which makes assigning gaming stations to teams, creating competition matchups, and arranging multiple video windows on room displays very natural for users.”
To accommodate future expansion, the school selected NAV Pro AV over IP for its scalability and ultra-low latency over 1 Gbps Ethernet. Encoders connect gaming PCs, PTZ cameras and other sources, while NAV scaling decoders deliver content to displays around the space in 4K resolution. The system also supports streaming to platforms like Twitch and YouTube through OBS Studio.
Multi-window processing is handled by Extron’s MGP 641 xi, enabling the production team to create split-screen layouts with up to eight source windows per display—enhancing the spectator experience with dynamic, multi-angle views of the action.
