ELITE Gaming Hosts March Madness NBA 2K Tournament in Syracuse With $150 Prize Pool

A $150 prize pool brought Syracuse's 2K community to Clinton Square on Saturday, March 21, when ELITE Gaming ran its March Madness NBA 2K tournament inside its arena on the lower level of the Atrium Building at 2 Clinton Square.

ELITE Gaming is Syracuse's premier esports arena, offering gaming events, tournaments, educational programs, camps, and a full-service restaurant. The March 21 event leaned into that tournament DNA with a solo quick-game bracket format, meaning every competitor carried their own bracket run without a team to fall back on. Wins and losses were theirs alone, and $150 sat at the top waiting.

The downtown esports and community gaming facility operates in the basement level of the Atrium Building at 2 Clinton Square. The arena includes two competition stages and a competition pit with more than 40 gaming computers, giving a solo bracket tournament like this one room to run multiple matchups simultaneously without squeezing players together.

Rob O'Connor and Matt Guernsey co-founded ELITE Gaming, putting their respective backgrounds in events and marketing and IT and networking to use in building out a space that now runs community competitions alongside educational programming. The March 21 tournament fits squarely in that community-first model: a relatively accessible format, a neighborhood prize pool, and an in-person setting that gets players in the same room instead of grinding ranked online.

The arena's on-site restaurant, The UnderGround, was available to players and spectators throughout the event, with the kitchen open until 9 p.m. Parking options near the Atrium include the Chase lot on South Clinton Street, the Atrium parking garage on Franklin Street, and additional spots at Fayette and Clinton Streets.

ELITE Gaming's event calendar doesn't slow down after March 21. A Networking Event is scheduled for March 23 at 5:00 p.m., and FRAG York runs March 26 through March 29. The organization's STEM and Gaming Spring Camp follows immediately after, running March 30 through April 3 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily, built for students in grades 4 through 9 and priced at $250 for the week. That camp mixes esports competition with hands-on robotics and drone technology, featuring titles like Marvel Rivals, Fortnite, and Super Smash Bros. alongside LEGO Robotics and drone programming.

For anyone who missed the bracket on March 21, ELITE Gaming can be reached at (315) 671-9002. The arena is situated in the Atrium Building between historical Clinton Square and Hanover Square, and the organization's summer camp sessions are already on the calendar, with weekend sessions in July and weeklong camps running August 10 through August 21.