Miami chosen as the first venue for planned series of multi-purpose esports arenas worldwide by Millennial Esports. The arena will train both esports and real-world racing drivers as well as host traditional esports competitions.
Miami chosen as the first venue for planned series of multi-purpose esports arenas worldwide by Millennial Esports. The arena will train both esports and real-world racing drivers as well as host traditional esports competitions.
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Darren Cox’s long and winding road to esports racing

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 12 min

Darren Cox took the long way to esports industry. He spent a couple of decades in the automotive industry at the alliance between carmakers Renault and Nissan. He handled franchising, digital marketing, product management, sponsorships, events, and other things.

He’s big fan of the racing video game Gran Turismo, and he always wanted to find a way into the industry. He ended up being head of motorsport and performance brands for Nissan in Japan. Then he set up the GT Academy partnership between Nissan and PlayStation, where fans of Gran Turismo were trained to be real-world race car drivers. That helped him see the intersection of race car driving, video games, and esports.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.