| Description: | orget swimming, what if your high school offered esports as an extracurricular “athletic” activity? While some may laugh, that’s the dream of Jordan Zietz, a 17-year-old entrepreneur who wants to bring esports competitions to high schools.
Esports competitions are already making headway at American colleges and universities, with some even offering scholarships to e-athletes. Central Connecticut State University is the latest to join the scene. Read more about how esports is expanding to become more like traditional sports below:
An Esports League Just for High Schoolers
All-Star eSports League, which Zietz founded, recently secured a seven-figure investment from PowerA president Eric Bensussen. (The exact figure is undisclosed.) All-Star hopes to become a free esports league for high schoolers who want to seriously compete in Overwatch, Fortnite, and even Super Smash Bros championships.
Zietz hopes All-Star would become what high schools teams are for football and basketball, in that it becomes a successful feeder system for college-level or professional league teams. All-Star is aiming to offer hopeful e-athletes scholarships and prizes to ascend, much like traditional scholarships for major traditional sports.
Professional esports is estimated to become a billion-dollar industry by 2020. Currently, prize pools for professional-level championships go as high up as 300 million. There’s significant interest in attracting the right talent to build up teams that could compete at the higher stakes level.
According to Zietz, high schools are very much into the idea. “A vast majority of schools are saying how can we get our students involved in esports, especially because it pertains particularly to the students who aren’t currently involved in other extracurricular sports,” Zietz told the news site Venture Beat. |
