(Courtesy of CSL)
Odds are Duran Parsi isn’t like most heads of eSports organizations or gaming franchises.
That’s because most are probably not doubling as a law student taking IP law classes. However, such is the life for Parsi, who is currently a third-year student at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, Calif. The lifelong gaming enthusiast is splitting time wrapping up his final year of school, but more importantly for him, leading the organization known as an informal version of the NCAA of eSports.
Since he was 10, Parsi has been passionate about gaming, with his game of choice being StarCraft. When he was younger, his parents didn’t allow gaming, so he would head over to a cousin’s house on most weekends and spend hours in front of the television.
That passion remained around 2008 as an undergraduate at the University of California San Diego, where Parsi continued his involvement with gaming as he rounded up a group of fellow students and challenged other UC schools to StarCraft competitions. At that time in the late 2000s, there wasn’t any money with StarCraft or gaming in general outside of South Korea, according to Parsi. The informal tournaments between California universities created a “self-contained community,” as Parsi described, with bragging rights on the line in the early days and maybe a few thousand dollars in prize money, if that.
With help from a few friends, the competitions eventually formed the basis for what is now the Collegiate Starleague, which was modeled after the South Korean Proleague. Parsi said that he combined parts of his savings and some of his graduate school loan money for his M.A. in International Relations and Affairs from George Washington University to help fund the league for the first few years upon graduation from UCSD.
Yet that almost didn’t work.
“My dad was like, ‘You either need to find a job or move back home,’” Parsi said of the early state of the CSL and its inability to make money. “I didn’t want to just get a job for the sake of living. At that time, I started thinking about school again so I could get more student loans basically.”
What started as 25 teams in 2009 has turned into hundreds across college campuses competing for $200,000 in scholarships and prize money during the 2016-17 academic year. The league’s tournament schedule is both year-round and on a semester basis, with students having the freedom to create teams fairly easily. As long as one is a full-time student in good academic standing, he or she can assemble a team of fellow gamers.
According to Parsi, most universities have one or two squads playing in the CSL, but there are roughly 20 schools who field teams for all of the CSL games, which includes StarCraft II, League of Legends, Dota 2, CS:GO, FIFA and a half dozen more. Matches air on the CSL’s two Twitch channels six days a week and are projected to reach three million unique viewers by the end of 2016.
Parsi said that he and his CSL staff are currently in an “all hands on deck” mode as they continue to finalize registrations for the year, promote their ‘Back to School’ tour across campuses like the University of Central Florida and UCLA and meet with executives and brand marketers to discuss sponsorship opportunities for the upcoming live championships.
Parsi, a self-proclaimed academic, told himself in 2014 that would try to handle law school and CSL, but if he had to make a decision, he would. So far, that hasn’t been the case as he has learned to be more efficient with his time, devoting roughly 80 percent of his schedule to the Starleague and 20 percent to school. Now, he is even able to withdraw a small salary from the league, too.
Parsi said that it “sucks for relationships,” the constant back-and-forth between his two full-time jobs, but both are passion points for different reasons. If the CSL doesn’t pan out, he said that because of his background in gaming and being familiar with the business of the sport, settling in as an eSports lawyer would be an option. He has enjoyed his intellectual property classes along with estate planning, so that may be another avenue. For now, though, his attention is focused on growing the league from both a membership and monetary standpoint.
“I’m definitely a workaholic, I get it from my dad,” added Parsi. “I want to take the CSL as far as I can go or to a point where I stop enjoying it.”
