How a connection to esports can boost your college’s prospects for success

At colleges and universities across North America, students huddle together in cockpit-like concentration at neon-illuminated cubicles or the cozy comfort of dormitory common areas. Some tap away at a keypad, while others watch and cheer them on while tuning into the college’s on-campus TV network.

Just a few years ago, computer gaming was thought of as a way to enjoy a few hours of carefree recreation. Now it has become something else: a high-stakes activity that has the power to put its best players, and the institutions which support them, on a global stage.

With hundreds of schools recruiting thousands of gamers to compete before audiences of millions, the question is no longer about proving the viability of esports as a college activity, but how a school can find a way of harnessing its momentum into a model for sustaining success.

As high-school-age gamers get recruited to university programs and intervarsity competitions host gamers playing as teams and individually to large audiences, the possibilities of esports to raise their profiles and build lasting student communities are too strong for college administrators to ignore.

Zooming into prominence

Valued at $1.22 billion in 2021, competitive esports has been projected to climb to $5.48 billion in value by 2029.

The power of e-sports to draw viewers has been made. In 2022, the League of Legends World Championship drew over five million peak viewers. A similar global event around another popular game drew 5.4 million peak viewers in 2021.

Estimated esports viewership stands at around 30 million in the United States alone – and is projected to rise to 34.8 million by 2026.

While national viewership levels remain static or in decline for traditional team sports like football, basketball and baseball, esports viewership reportedly enjoys a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.7%.

A tool to boost college enrollment

In just the last few years, online competitive gaming offers a means of differentiation for colleges seeking to attract and retain students.

Growing from just seven members in 2016, the National Association of Collegiate E-sports (NASE) claimed over 170 member schools and over 5,000 student competitors at the start of 2023.

High school programs are increasingly serving as pipelines for talent recruitment as well as positioning esports as organized competition with strong Generation Z (those born between the late 1990s to early 2010s) and even Generation Alpha (beginning early 2010s) uptake.

A critical feature of esports is their ability to draw people together across a college campus to tune into the college TV livestreaming network and watch others representing their school take on representatives of other schools in team-based or tournament play. This channeling of school spirit can in turn contribute to student retention, even alumni engagement.

DigitalTrends.com notes: “With increasing support from colleges and universities in the form of program investment, scholarships, and continued interest from students, collegiate esports are set to become as normal an extracurricular as sports themselves.”

Benefits of an esports program

College enrollment has been experiencing persistent, low-single-digit decline over the last several years, a trend that showed no sign of abating in 2022.

For today’s aspiring freshmen, esports is both a sport and a conduit for social and competitive engagement, as popular games enjoy wide appeal. This excitement can be harnessed by schools that are willing to encourage e-sports activities on campus, either in an intervarsity or intermural context.

The growth potential extends beyond revenue from activities themselves to inspiring students to feel more invested in their school, in a way similar to collegiate sports of other eras. Many of today’s college students view esports as more inclusive or interesting than traditional sports.

Some esports enthusiasts see potential for developing critical thinking and transferrable skills with college participants, be it in the realm of strategic thinking, team building, or computer science.

“Whether it’s the playing of the games itself, or the work that comes with setting up and managing the competitions, there is space for an entirely new collective to grow around these esports. One that can provide students with a new way to engage, learn, and advance.”

How a college can build up an esports program

One advantage of esports is that the legacy advantages of size, history and stature are less impactful in esports. Any school with the right approach and commitment has the potential to break out and become a major force.

Such an approach requires the following steps:

• Invest in the right technology – Ample bandwidth and connectivity are critical to a successful esports program, particularly as high latency can impact competitions and dampen enthusiasm for a program. 
• Introduce staff leaders who can organize an esports program – Such people are in high demand, but can be recruited to a program with ambitious goals. 
• Model the program on successful student-activity organizations, built around the same bylaws and foundational structures – Success in esports is based on inclusivity, where all who want a place to play are welcome.
• Make sure there’s room to play – A dedicated physical, ample-sized space is a requirement for creating an immersive gaming environment, no less than a playing field is for a traditional athletic sport. 

Avoid potential bandwidth drains – To succeed, esports must co-exist (not compete) with technology-heavy educational disciplines that are being run simultaneously, and allow for likely innovations in esports’ short-term future, e.g. virtual reality and augmented reality.

How to take charge of your esports future

Begin by investing in bandwidth-enabling technology that allows your institution to not only support gaming communities and esports teams, but host regional and even national competitions to highlight the school and its commitment to esports. Managed services like Dedicated Fiber Internet from Spectrum Enterprise give colleges and universities access to a private fiber network with up to 100 Gps of scalable, symmetrical internet service.

Then consider the advantage of setting up an SD-WAN overlay to perform application traffic steering throughout the campus network. A Managed SD-WAN solution can help prioritize how different traffic types (gaming, video, voice, etc.) are best routed to assure high performance and minimize the potential for critical disruptions.

On-campus programming that celebrates esports activities is critical, too, both to attract gamers and to engage those students who are not egamers themselves but are potential fans and supporters of a campus-based program. Campus-wide television streaming services like SpectrumU TV give students the power to view esports and other television-ready entertainment programming from any location or device on campus.

Just as a successful college must take in many new cultural and disciplinary concepts to fulfill its mission of offering a deeper understanding of the world we live in, so too must it make a place for this new form of competitive recreation which provides so many of today’s college students with a sense of enjoyment and community. Fortunately, the cost of entry is fairly low, while the level of acceptance is already quite high, and rising.

Are you interested in learning more about how your college or university can attract or retain on-campus students with technology that includes a dynamic video streaming package? Learn how you can do more to engage with today’s tech-centric college demographic with Spectrum Enterprise solutions.