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Riot Games Names League Of Legends Advisory Board Members

Riot Games has named the six members of the advisory board to the new Riot Scholastic Association of America, its standalone division to handle college and high school League of Legends esports. The advisory board members are Big Ten Network VP/Marketing Erin Harvego; Mountain West Conference Senior Associate Commissioner/Government & Legal Affairs Carolayne Henry; Intersport Exec Dir of Esports Kurt Melcher, who also leads esports at Robert Morris Univ.; Univ. of Cal-Irvine Dir of Esports Mark Deppe; Univ. of Utah Dir of Esports Operations A.J. Dimick; and MIT professor T.L. Taylor, who also is Dir of Research for the diversity advocacy group AnyKey. The RSAA will have an open mandate to pursue initiatives that will help establish LoL as a long-term presence on campuses throughout the U.S. instead of relying on possibly short-lived student-run clubs. Riot Games Head of Collegiate League of Legends Michael Sherman and Head of Scholastic Esports Matt Birris will continue to lead the college and high school operations teams, respectively. They will both continue to report to North American Senior Publishing Manager Chris Wyatt.

NOT A RESPONSE TO NCAA: The creation of the RSAA comes shortly after the NCAA BOG decided not to pursue its own esports plan. However, Sherman said this was not a response to the NCAA’s decision. Riot always intended to create an entity to control its own game, and had the NCAA pursued esports, it would have pushed to make the RSAA comparable to the NCAA’s sports-specific committees. Sherman claims the top priorities of the RSAA are to better develop Riot’s brand in the collegiate world and to improve communications with schools that field esports teams or that might be interested in joining. “We want to have a better communication layer that focuses on 1-to-many communications with schools,” Sherman said. "That’s been a struggle with Riot in the current capacity.” The advisory board will hold its first meeting Thursday, when the college LoL championships begin.

For more coverage of the business of esports, visit our partners, esportsobserver.com.

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