The State of Collegiate Esports

This week, Stream Hatchet took a deep dive into collegiate esports. The collegiate sector will grow with ample opportunities, but the fragmented structure will need to be addressed. The mass adoption within pop culture has made awareness easier for collegiate esports but there still exists some obstacles. Regarding viewership, the collegiate space saw incredible growth from 2018 to 2019. However, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused major issues. Students weren’t on campuses, events were cancelled, and transitioning to online formats became challenging for leagues and tournament operators. All of this caused a 44% decline in hours watched last year. But how did viewership decline so much when total collegiate event streams increased 95%? The muffled word-of-mouth marketing on campuses in combination with an influx of streams across all platforms caused by the pandemic meant less awareness and more competition.