2022 will be the first year Holy Family University will have its very own Esports team. This opens a lot of opportunities to expanding college campuses in not only providing better academic experiences for students, but in addition to, more student involvement in colleges. In 2022, the Esports market was valued at 1.83 billion dollars. Esports is the gateway and vessel, for mainstream competitive gaming. Esports encompasses the entirety of competitive gaming that spans from speed running, high score events, and most popular, team-based competitions.
These events/tournaments are in celebration of the skills and complexity each player can
perform in a professional setting. Think of Esports just like any other Major League sport. Each
state has a team, logo, colors, star players, and a game that all these teams are centered around.
In the same way that these Major League sports have college-level teams, Esports has started to
make its way onto college campuses.
Esports, or MLG for short, has started to turn heads at Holy Family University. “I feel like it’s good to have an Esports and having the school be more invested in gaming in general,” said Marc McDowell, Holy Family senior. With a new gaming team, it is certain more possible students will start considering HFU as their college of choice. 65% of Americans play video games, of that 65%, 34% is between the ages of 18-25. This shows that the interest is there for video games and can help bring more students into HFU.
“I find that the whole Esports thing is cool, and I’m glad of the new area,” said Christian Gonzalez, first-year student at Holy Family. The allure to the school can generate better chances for our Esports team to perform well in tournaments that can generate both cash prizes for the team and money for the school.
Philadelphia has already hopped onto the Esports gaming bandwagon with the construction of the new Philadelphia Fusion Stadium.
This stadium is to be used for gaming events hosted by the Philadelphia Fusion team, live venues, entertainment, and the most important to HFU, university-level game tournaments. With 65% of the population interested in video games, Holy Family will surely gain a lot more attention with our premier gaming team competing in the same arena that national teams play in.
Tapping into a gigantic revenue market, the city is constructing it’s very own gaming arena. With the appeal this project can have to current and future students, the HFU Esports team is all around, a grand slam of an idea.
“The Esports team is cool, it’s a shame it got created in my last year on school. I was thinking about attending graduate school here, and the idea of being able to be on the team made me even more interested in coming back,” said Jose Carrera, Holy Family senior. With all these factors playing into the success of the Esports team, it is surely going to be one of the most anticipated events on Holy Family’s campus!
George Hindman is a fourth-year student at Holy Family.
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