Mocs News Reporting the news that matters most to UTC
CHATTANOOGA, TN (mocsnews.com)
The UTC community is incredibly diverse and continues to widen its grip on the academic world and the vast topics within. Universities across the country are finding success in a new market that has yet to be completely unraveled. This new marketplace is Esports, and it is growing faster than any other sport or team activity on the globe. Esports is competitive gaming that includes tournaments, challenges and even content creation for consumption. Universities are becoming more and more involved in competitive “Call of Duty”, “Rocket League”0 and many more games.
UTC currently has an Esports group that is slowly growing but with more devotion and attention this market could be vastly expanded. The College Call of Duty League is easy to join, it only requires four members on a team with the game and a PC/Console. The reason this could be attractive to UTC is because the league has featured up to over 25,000 live viewers on Twitch, a streaming platform. People love to play games, if students were given the opportunity to join this league on behalf of UTC, think of the marketing possibilities of the school. The school will play matches against the biggest and most well known universities in the country and a good play from a team member could garner unlimited amounts of views across the internet.
A member of the UTC Esports Team, Hayden White, recently said in an interview that he would love to dip his foot into the water of more games, tournaments and content. This could help attract new students, supporters and even sponsors for the school. Hayden said, “I love Esports and gaming. I always have, it is interesting to see the possibilities if a school put as much money into Esports as they have other sports.”
Universities across the southeast are getting heavily involved with Esports. The University of Alabama and The University of Kentucky have developed areas for its team members to practice and compete with top notch equipment. These schools have recently been featured in live streams that garner 100,000 plus live views. This comes at the price of having the equipment to compete, however that seems cheap for marketing that large.
Jamie Mclean is the Director of Esports and Gaming at UTC. He was asked about the future of Esports at the university and said this, “I am excited to see the growth and the future that Esports has at our university. One day, I think a large number of people will look back and not be able to remember before Esports was mainstream. Sports took a long time to grow but eventually I believe Esports will be as integral to the community as sports is for college campuses.
UTC is moving in the right direction to propel its Esports teams and players into a successful program. With a little more time and money, it could be easily considered one of the top programs in the SOCON.
