Forget football. College students are scoring big with esports.

Sean Ey’s left hand clicks a computer keyboard with the adroitness of a court reporter taking notes. His right hand cups a mouse that his fingers tap with equal deftness. 

He is playing a video game as a soldier hunting artificial intelligence-generated enemies inside an empty airplane. They trade fire with heavy machine guns until his avatar is felled. His PC screen taunts him with the words, “Mission Lost.” 

Mr. Ey isn’t home playing among friends. He is at college, flanked by coaches who steer thousands of dollars toward his education each year to play video games for them. Mr. Ey, a junior computer science major at Arcadia University just outside Philadelphia, is part of the rapidly growing collegiate esports world. 

“I’ve played video games since I was 4, so it’s been a massive part of my life,” he says. “I’ve met so many people, and to be able to do it in this style and play at such a competitive level, it’s great.”  

During the pandemic, college sports lost many millions of dollars, resulting in schools having to shutter programs. But that was not the case for esports, which has been on campuses for about a decade and is thriving along with the billion-dollar industry it helps feed. For students, esports offers a way to earn scholarships – to the tune of $16 million in 2022 – and build community via club and varsity competition. For the hundreds of schools that participate, it is a pipeline for filling classes.  

“The benefit of having an esports program at a university is obviously it’s going to drive enrollment,” says Nick Alverson, director of esports at Arcadia.  

Michael Brooks, executive director of the National Association of Collegiate Esports, which governs esports – rather than the NCAA – says boosts in enrollment can be the gift that keeps giving for both students and universities.

Transferable skills that students gain from esports, he says, include familiarization with digital platforms, learning how to broadcast, and how to do graphic overlays, stream online, and manage online communities.

“These are the exact same skill sets that are incredibly in demand by companies right now,” he says, “with so few schools offering specific curriculum to develop those.”

The National Association of Collegiate Esports started in 2016 with varsity programs in six schools. Today, there are 217 campuses with varsity standing. In addition, the association oversees the Starleague in the United States and Canada, which is made up of more than 775 colleges, a majority of which don’t yet have varsity teams. It also tracks the overall amount of scholarships awarded for esports.

Championships are held for varsity and club teams at the end of every semester for 17 esports, including games such as Super Smash Brothers, Rocket League, Call of Duty, and Rainbow Six Siege. Games can include card games, war games, shooting games, racing, and one-on-one combat. 

“A sense of belonging”

In Pennsylvania, the Arcadia University program has more than 50 players, with scholarships ranging from $500 to $10,000 per semester.

“From esports I get a sense of belonging with the community from everyone here,” says senior Corey Klevan, a computer science major.

His parents were skeptical about his recruitment out of high school to play Hearthstone, a multiplayer, strategy-based card game in which players can cast spells, fight in duels, and summon special characters to fight for them.  

“I didn’t like reading and would refuse to read. And [my parents] would yell at me to get off the games. And then like, lo and behold, I’m getting a scholarship to play video games,” says Mr. Klevan with a laugh. 

The past three years playing esports have helped him collect good friends and rack up memories. Mr. Klevan, who is the captain of the campus self-defense club, says esports helped him deal with confidence issues and socializing. He doesn’t see a professional career in esports in his future. His mother has gone from indifferent to on board with his playing video games in college. As for his father’s demand for good grades – well, he has a 3.77 GPA. 

Traditionally, schools used to market their attractiveness with big-name sports programs, says Mr. Brooks of the esports association. But a burgeoning gaming population was being ignored. The internet was a game changer for multiplayer competition – no longer did people have to share the same physical space to play together.

“Finally the recognition came – and I think it was late, actually – that if that’s what our customers are identifying with, if that’s where their passion is, if that’s where they’re investing their time and energy, then we should provide value that matches with that interest,”  Mr. Brooks says.

Sponsorships and advertising revenue have ended up funding esports programs at many colleges, including some schools partnering with game publishers for naming rights to esports arenas. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, for example, debuts a new arena this semester.

Gaming in style 

In Boise, Idaho, 25 members of the esports team compete inside the 7,000-square-foot Boise State Esports Arena. In the three-story building –  across from a hotel, a Trader Joe’s market, and various takeout and sit-down restaurants – battles are fought in Overwatch and Valorant, two first-person shooter games; and Rocket League, a vehicular soccer game. The main theater is decked out with leather seats for spectators, and the building offers a Battleground area for intramural use and for the general public.

The broadcast control room, with its assortment of screens, looks like the command center for a NASA shuttle launch. It is complemented by the Studio, a designated space with furniture and a large projector screen where players can be interviewed. 

Chris “Doc” Haskell co-founded the program in 2017. He was an educational technology professor and games researcher. Today Boise’s esports program makes top 10 lists, such as a recent one from esports promoter nerdstreet.com, and another from BestColleges.com.  

“I was doing some research for a keynote I was going to give on other ways to use games,” Dr. Haskell says. He realized that esports had the potential to really take off. “I discovered it was going to get massive, like, oh my gosh, this is going to be huge. And we should do something about it.” 

Boise State University’s esports program started on a shoestring budget, which has grown to $500,000 annually. It now offers $150,000 in scholarships each academic year, ranging from as little as $500 to $1,000 per semester to full rides, Dr. Haskell says. Advertisers and local businesses have flocked to its broadcast operation, which reaches more than a million eyes per month and broadcasts 30 to 40 hours of live content weekly. 

Students benefit in a plethora of ways, Dr. Haskell says. 

“We are a platform for other departments to inject their curriculum into, so communications, athletic training, athletic leadership education, computer science, cybersecurity, all have elements that they can bring in and use,” he says. 

Varsity members on BSU’s esports team must keep a 3.0 GPA to play. That is a selling point to parents. The program’s first two years saw challenges from parents skeptical about the program’s usefulness. Now, watching their kids get scholarships, and name, image, and likeness deals, is all the empirical evidence needed to make them do an about-face.

“Parents have figured it out fast,” Dr. Haskell says. “Two years has been the distance between when they didn’t really trust it to now they come in as their child’s No. 1 advocate.”