E-sports has evolved in recent years as "massive arenas are selling out" and brands like Bud Light are also entering the space, and collegiate e-sports is "poised to experience that same growth," according to Kien Lam of ESPN.com. Riot's Univ. of League of Legends was "one of the first to make major investments" in collegiate e-sports. Riot founded the North American Collegiate Championship in '14 and "has since expanded and molded it into today's uLoL Campus Series, which comprises 32 college teams from all across North America." Some schools are "going all out" like UC-Irvine, which "is launching a massive, 3,500-square-foot facility dedicated" to e-sports. It will have a "stage for competitions, 80 personal computers and a live broadcasting studio and will serve as a social hub for the student body." It is also "backed with the help of Riot Games." The Univ. of British Columbia is "host to seven League of Legends teams alone," and they are now "back-to-back uLoL champions and have the opportunity to establish a legacy similar to the greats of college sports, as UCLA did with basketball." UBC e-sports Association co-Founder Carman Lam said, "Right now, they just see it as global exposure. I think they're only starting to understand e-sports, but I'm glad they are trying to learn and follow our team's news. It's more difficult to teach and learn than I first imagined. There are definitely some high-tech-savvy instructors at our school and they play video games, but they didn't know esports is such a huge global phenomenon." Ohio State's team is "immensely competitive in the Big Ten" and is "trying to court support." OSU student and League of Legends team manager Nicolas Re said, "With so many other sports that OSU is proficient at and the limited amount of publicity our esports teams have had until recently, it has been difficult to gain support from our university when only a small group of people even know we have esports teams" (ESPN.com, 4/27).
GOING WORLDWIDE: ESPN.com's Jacob Wolf noted a new e-sports organization called Nuovo Gaming "launched Wednesday, with a focus on developing the Oceanic esports scene." The organization said that it has "taken note of all the recent investment in other esports territories, such as North Carolina and Europe, and it wants to offer similar resources to Oceanic players and teams." However, Nuovo Gaming's staff is "mainly from North America, which will offer obstacles and challenges for it to overcome working across the world" (ESPN.com, 4/27).
