ESPORTSU, a new 24/7 Twitch channel, will give collegiate esports programs opportunties to further monetize themselves.
The Collegiate Sports Management Group has announced the foundation of ESPORTSU, a new Twitch channel completely focused on Collegiate esports. The ESPORTSU brand's founding principles include building community, content, and events across the scholastic esports space.
ESPORTSU looks to solve collegiate promotional problems in esports
The company looks to solve a long-standing issue in the collegiate esports space - that of monetization. They look to do that by enhancing the property rights of more than 3,000 institutions (high schools through four-year colleges) to support content development, revenue opportunities, and exposure through regional and national events. Indeed, these issues have been some of the reason that collegiate esports programs have failed to gain traction with gamers beyond those involved at those schools.
While some programs, like Blizzard's Heroes of the Dorm, Red Bull's Campus Clutch or Riot's collegiate programs gave collegiate esports some traction, without programs like those, there has been little limelight for collegiate players.
The ESPORTSU brand is working on various revenue share models focused on media rights, name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights. In addition to focusing on the commercialization of collegiate esports. This will be done through content creation and monetization, data aggregation, events and tournaments, and community building.
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ESPORTSU's 24/7 Collegiate Twitch channel
The launch of ESPORTSU includes their Twitch channel. It will be a 24/7 channel-focused purely on collegiate esports. This includes
- daily matches across all game titles from their conference partners,
- collegiate esports talk shows
- student-produced programming
- community events
- charity streams
- international collegiate content
- live and virtual events,
- a collegiate awards show
- educational panels.
Additionally, the Twitch channel will debut six hours of daily programming from top collegiate esports conferences, including the ECAC, NECC, NJCAAE, and ECC.
“The collegiate esports landscape is evolving and maturing rapidly, and our goal with ESPORTSU is not to observe collegiate esports mature - but to be the catalyst for it,” said Bernhard Thomas, EVP of ESPORTSU. “We’re building the framework serving the long-term success of collegiate esports through a spirit of collaboration and alliances.”
Collegiate Esports National Competition seeding events
As part of their launch, ESPORTSU will run two online collegiate esports tournaments for Valorant and Super Smash Bros Ultimate. The Midwest Invitational runs on Saturday, January 29. The Southeast Invitational is on Sunday, January 30 - both beginning on each day at 10 am EDT. The winning teams will seed into the Collegiate Esports National Competition in May 2022.
- Southeast Invitational
- Valorant: Auburn University, Chowan University, Clemson University, Florida Atlantic University, Full Sail University, University of South Florida, University of Central Florida, Wake Forest University
- Super Smash Brothers Ultimate: Clemson University, Florida Atlantic University, Full Sail University, University of South Florida, University of Central Florida, Wake Forest University, Georgia Tech
- Midwest Invitational
- Valorant: Ball State University, Butler University, Indiana University, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, Ohio University, University of Kentucky
- Super Smash Brothers Ultimate: Bethel University, Butler University, Michigan State University, Northwood University, Ohio State University, Ohio University, University of Kentucky
The CENC will take place on May 6-8 2022 in Atlanta GA, and will feature winners from this event as well as others. The event's set to be an "all-inclusive" collegiate esports event featuring collegiate athletes from across the United States.
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