Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports returns for spring split, offering career opportunities for students

Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports, the biggest esports competition aimed at university students in the UK & Ireland, has returned for the spring split to provide university students with tournament and career opportunities.

The competition returns after an exciting winter split which featured over 1,000 university teams from more than 100 UK universities, alongside dozens of community gaming events and many students getting their first work experience in the industry.

This split will see students compete in League of Legends, VALORANT, Teamfight Tactics, CS:GO, Clash Royale, Rocket League, Overwatch 2, Apex Legends and Rainbow Six Siege.

Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports is present in more than 20 countries on 4 continents, and has a strong educational component, offering university students both training opportunities and their first professional experiences within the sector.

New to the Spring Split

A new addition for this academic year is the University Leaderboard, a ranking system where every team and player can contribute to their university’s points total by taking part and winning games. After the Winter split, the University of Warwick is currently comfortably in the lead, but with the leaderboard continuing into Spring it still remains all to play for.

The new split also brings a new game, for the first time, Apex Legends has been added as a regular season tournament.

All of the tournaments start afresh for the Spring season, with teams playing regularly over eight weeks and competing to feature in the Grand Finals in March and April.

Players of League of Legends, VALORANT, Rocket League, Teamfight Tactics, and Clash Royale will have the opportunity to compete to represent Great Britain at Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports Masters, the on-site competition that brings together the best teams from 16 countries, who will seek to be crowned European champions at university level.

David Jackson, Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports UK & Ireland Country Manager said:

“Our core goals are to increase participation, create a positive and supportive environment for students, and help develop the grassroots of UK and Ireland esports. After a successful Winter split, I am delighted to begin a new phase of Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports in the UK and Ireland. This term we plan to step it up: with the launch of the brand-new University Tour on campuses around the UK, continued development of the university leaderboard, more support for student society events, more opportunities for students to get involved and (details soon to be revealed) an even bigger live finals event.”

Education & Esports                                                                                             

Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports’ mission is to bring awareness of the many employment opportunities emerging from the esports industry to students and contribute to their education. The first split of the competition included educational workshops and guest lectures with tools and training in some of these areas, which will continue in the second split. Workshop topics so far have included subjects such as marketing, branding, and community management, and will be built on in the Spring season with workshops and talks continuing these themes as well as discussing broadcast and events.

In addition to education and training, Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports will continue to offer dozens of paid roles for early-career esports broadcasters and league operations staff – helping support the pipeline of future esports professionals.

From virtual to on-site

In an environment that is mainly virtual, one of the objectives of Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports is to get closer to the student community through face-to-face events. That is why it is developing the UNIVERSITY Tour, a tour of multiple universities across the country, which aims to raise awareness of the competition, and provide students with a variety of experiences linked to the environment of esports and gaming.   

UNIVERSITY Tour is set to launch in the UK in Spring, visiting eight universities around the UK, to be announced soon.

Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports is made possible thanks to the support of top-level publishers such as Riot Games, HP Omen, and Prime Student.

Registration for the second split competitions are now open, and more information can be found on the Amazon UNIVERSITY Esports’ website.