opinion 2

More colleges should embrace the growth of Esports and provide scholarships to those who wish to pursue this career path. This also provides another opportunity outside of school to be successful.

According to an article by Chris Aviles in Teched up Teacher, Having an esports team at an post-secondary institution helps bring more students out of there dormitory’s. To participate in in an activity at school instead of just playing games in there rooms. The connection to school is very important students who played a lot of video games would just head home to play video games, but having a team would encourage students to socialize in real life compared to having most of their friends online.

There is a lot more opportunities outside of just playing the game. According to Chris Aviles in Teched up Teacher, You can run the social media/website, run the live stream,be a team journalist and videographer, be a live caster. All these build soft skills to help with future jobs and or college applications.  

Esports is a future industry and is thriving. According to Elliot Levine at EdTech, By now, many educators know that esports — multiplayer video games played competitively for spectators — are no longer just for fun. In fact, they are gaining in popularity against traditional sports such as football, baseball and basketball. More colleges and universities are embracing esports to drive media attention, recruit more digitally minded students and increase revenue through promotions and branded sponsorships. And for many young people, esports have become a way of life. In fact, two-thirds of the U.S. population over the age of 13 are gamers, and an estimated 100 million people worldwide were esports players in 2017. Not surprisingly, esports have become big business as millions of global viewers log on to watch the tournaments. Last year, the final game of esports staple “League of Legends” drew more than 60 million online spectators. It was the second most watched sporting event of the year, following the Super Bowl. Esports is going to continue growing and many gaming companies invest in players at a young age. Many players do not take getting signed by an organization for granted the grind to become the best player has just started.

Esports will continue to grow and more colleges and universities should accept the fact and start providing scholarships and prepare for a future of students interested in esports. According to John Koetsier at Forbes, Esports is growing an incredible rate -- 41.3% year-over-year, according to a Newzoo report. That growth is transforming the space into a $1.5 billion market by 2020, says Newzoo's Peter Warman, when about 300 million people will be watching eSports. Within the last year or so we’ve started to see more and more institutions offering full ride scholarships at the varsity level.  Previously scholarships have been partial.This was a fairly rapid development in my eyes and I expect this trend to continue with most teams consisting of students on full-rides and students on partial scholarships in the years to come.  There is still a tremendous amount to be done to define varsity esports and set the foundation for stable growth.  Though from my experience with traditional athletics in higher education, I have not seen any other traditional sports move as rapidly as esports has.Certainly within five years I hope to see varsity esports be a common sight on college campuses across North America.  Within ten years I hope that esports is an expectation at all schools with intercollegiate programs on campus.

The future of esports is bright and the there is a lot of students who play video games. Esports scholarships is a realistic goal that should be pursued by every college and university that wishes to help students wanting to pursue a career in this field.