Esports Sports scholarships are coming soon

Professional esports — competitive video game playing as a spectator sport — is surging in the US, with revenues in the hundreds of millions and growing fast. So it’s little surprise that collegiate esports — in which universities field their own teams just as they would for baseball or basketball — has been growing as well, to the point where players are now sometimes earning scholarships that pay their entire tuition.

Stephen’s College, an all-women’s college in Columbia, Missouri, announced a varsity esports program two weeks ago. The University of Utah did the same in early April.

Meanwhile, infrastructure is also growing for schools that don’t have official esports programs. For the past three years, Tespa, a collegiate esports network that organizes tournaments, has produced a tournament called Heroes of the Dorm, in which groups of college students play the Blizzard-developed video game Heroes of the Storm for scholarship money. The winners of Heroes of the Dorm each year are awarded up to $25,000 a year for three years total.