Cowboys owner Jerry Jones joining esports business world

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has teamed with Fort Worth-based real estate investor John Goff to get into the $700 million global esports industry.

Jones and Goff said Monday they acquired Complexity Gaming, an esports organization based in Houston since 2007. Complexity Gaming, founded in 2003, will relocated to The Star in Frisco, the Cowboys headquarters.

Esports is competition using electronic gaming systems, typically video games. Forbes recently estimated there are about 148 million players worldwide. Two years ago, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban invested in the Seattle-based esports startup company Unikrn.

Construction will begin soon on an operations center and global headquarters for the company, including offices, production studios and training facilities. Complexity players will have access to the training, athletic development and sports medicine services of any esports athletes in the world, the company said.

Kyle Bautista, a Complexity Gaming spokesman, said about 20 employees from the Houston headquarters will relocated to Frisco in the next few months. About 50 employees in all will move to the new location in the next year, he said.

Jason Lake is the founder and CEO of Complexity Gaming. In the past 14 years, teams and players with Complexity Gaming have won more than 130 championships, the company said.

“The growth in professional gaming is incredibly significant,” Jones said in a statement. “I’m confident our resources will continue the growth of Complexity for years to come.”

Goff is chairman of Goff Capital and Crescent Real Estate, known in Fort Worth for once owning the 40-story 777 Main office tower in downtown. More recently, Crescent is the developer of the new American Airlines headquarters near DFW, in far east Fort Worth. In October, the company bought the Westin Atlanta Perimeter North, a 372-room hotel in Atlanta.

Crescent owns and/or manages more than $2.5 billion in assets, including several properties in Dallas.

Goff co-founded Crescent Real Estate Equities with the late investor Richard Rainwater in the early 1990s. Goff was CEO of Crescent when it was sold in 2007 to Morgan Stanley for $6.5 billion. He reacquired it in 2009.

Added Goff, “Acquiring an iconic organization in partnership with the owners of the most valuable sports franchise in the world made for an ideal investment partnership. The sponsorship and marketing might of the Jones family and character and tenacity of Jason Lake are second to none.”

This story was originally published November 6, 2017 at 10:15 AM with the headline "Cowboys owner Jerry Jones joining esports business world."