Deandre “Dee” Jones is focused on making a difference.

Founder and CEO of Jump Ahead L3C, a youth-focused organization featured in Forbes in 2020 with goals such as a community center and educational workshops for children, Jones also is president of operations and a coach for kids ages 11-14 in the Urban Youth Summer Basketball League.

But his newest idea may have a more far-reaching effect. Jones is working to bring a professional e-sports tournament to the city and he’s thinking big — like, DeVos Place big.

He said his passion lies in supporting underprivileged children in need of meaningful pastimes to keep them out of trouble. He said he enjoys working one-on-one with the kids he coaches at the Urban Youth League and takes pride in knowing the work he does gives them constructive ways to spend their time.

When the basketball season ends for the kids, however, Jones said those constructive outlets shut down, too.

“Once these seasons are over, these kids are looking for the next opportunity,” he said.

And that opportunity might be in the electronic sports realm.

E-sports is a form of sports that take place via video game and often feature team-based competition. The games include fighting, strategy, first-person shooter, racing, card games and, of course, sports.

Virtually any sport that can take place in a physical space has been replicated in the e-sports world, with popular video game developer EASports offering soccer, football, ice hockey, golf, basketball, Formula 1 racing and mixed martial arts games.

Other popular e-sports examples include games like Fortnite, League of Legends, Call of Duty Doom, Overwatch and even Tetris.

E-sports have grown exponentially in recent years, as the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and universities and made in-person sports teams difficult to maintain. Young players are attracted to online sports in lieu of physical teams due to their ease of access and as a way of creating and maintaining community.

As e-sports have grown, so has the revenue surrounding the industry. The e-sports sector has been projected to exceed $1 billion in revenue in 2022, money that comes in through live streaming ticket sales, in-game purchases, media rights, sponsorships and advertising. Tournaments, held in large cities nationwide, attract in-person and live viewers numbering in the millions, as the players compete for cash prize pools that range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for winners.

This is the sort of revenue that Jones is looking to bring to Grand Rapids. He sees e-sports as a way to not only connect young kids to each other and a valuable use of time, but also a way to engage the community and connect Grand Rapids to the wider national e-sports player population.

Jones has been focused on this endeavor for the past year. He has been in contact with the Grand Rapids Police Department, county commissioners and community leaders, garnering interest and educating city leaders on the benefits and profitability of hosting an e-sports tournament. 

As he continues to make connections with West Michigan leaders and organizations to help develop his plan, Jones said he hopes to have a Grand Rapids e-sports tournament ready to kick off in the next year.

He sees a tournament as a fresh way to bring the community together, envisioning entities like the police department playing against citizens or local colleges attending the event as a vendor to connect with attendees, utilizing the common space as a way to make creative changes.

“(I’m) trying to find that thing that connects everybody from all different walks of life,” Jones said. He added that he wants to “create some synergy and community trust.”

And that community aspect of e-sports is what has made them so popular. There are games for every type of player, and leagues and players of all ages.

“My goal is to eventually (make) Grand Rapids a hub space for e-sports games,” Jones said. “People travel from all around the country, they come to these events … utilize the hotels, buy out the hotel rooms.”

Jones foresees a DeVos Place event with local and national brand sponsorships, he anticipates sports games featuring local teams like the Griffins or Whitecaps and he wants to see well-known game influencers participating to help draw live-stream attendees.

And then, of course, Jones wants to bring this vision to the street level. As a youth-focused leader in the Grand Rapids community, Jones wants to make e-sports accessible to the kids he works with through Jump Ahead and the Urban Youth League.

While some schools in West Michigan have e-sports teams available to students, Jones wants to see kids in urban schools having that same opportunity. With those leagues in place, he said, urban kids can have a replacement for summer sports like the Urban Youth League and continue to find a supportive community and constructive outlet through team sports.