Three months ago Shawn Alt discovered a district — a place where people of like mind can meet up and socialize. He first heard of the place from a friend and after his first visit, he was hooked.

“I use to play down at the Fountain of Youth,” Alt said. “I decided to come and check it out one day and just kept coming back.”

Alt heard about The District Company, located at 224 north Dewey street, in January and has been coming to the shop every other day since.

Alt said he likes The District Company because of the relaxing vibes. He spends much of his time playing Magic the Gathering, League of Legends and occasionally a few board games including Cards Against Humanity.

The District is an all-ages gaming venue on the rise. Currently, it has almost 1,800 likes on Facebook which has grown significantly in the last few months. The most popular event has been game tournaments, which garner a lot of attention in the local gaming community.

The most prominent event since their opening has been a League of Legends tournament held March 3. The District expected 8 to 12 teams; instead, 19 teams showed up with a total of 100 attendees. Each team had five members and tournament play went on for 24 hours non-stop. During that time, the District broadcasted the event on twitch.TV, an online live streaming service and got over 3,000 people watching the stream worldwide.

Aron Frey, an employee at the District Company said while League of Legends is a popular electronic sport and has teams all across Wisconsin, Eau Claire is an oddball in the scene.

“We did a report on this, and Eau Claire is out of the norm in Wisconsin. Eau Claire is one of the few cities that does not have a League team,” Frey said.

The District has also hosts fighting game tournaments — one of their largest was a Nintendo Super Smash Brothers tournament.

“We had 70 to 80 people show up. They came from Fargo, North Dakota; Chicago, Ill.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Appleton, Lacrosse and Madison,” District Company owner Tim Sexton said. “We had a good representation of the Midwest.”

Beyond just hosting game tournaments, the District Company has also hosted charity events.

“The one thing that catches people really well on charity events is we donate a large amount of the profit of the tournament to charity. In the past we have run tournaments and it is really good for growing the community,” Frey said.

“As a sociologist, I think there is no substitute for face to face interaction especially for the gaming community where the games require people to be physically present,” Assistant Professor of Sociology and Communication Peter Hart-Brinson said. “Collective identities are built on shared interests, shared location and mutual interaction over time. Having a physical place where different people can come together to express their common identity is critical to people’s social health and happiness.”

The Company holds events daily, and keeps their Facebook followers updated on the venue’s happenings. The District holds two to four events a week for Magic the Gathering, Monday and Tuesdays are retro console game night, Thursday afternoons and Sunday nights are Yu-Gi-Oh, Friday nights are fighting games and Pokemon is every Sunday afternoon.

The District plans to open a second building on Barstow Street around June or August. Alt said he is psyched about the District expanding.

“It shows that the District Company is getting bigger and popular,” he said. “People actually want them to expand to other places.”