It’s official: students in the UK can now get a BA (Hons) degree in esports.
Staffordshire University has introduced the three-year course, which includes organising your own commercial esports event, casting, PR, marketing, learning about the technical/production aspects and creating business plans for your own esports company.
Students will also ‘explore the culture of esports, its audience, genres and fanbase’.
To get on the course, students will need 112 UCAS points (BBC A-levels or a DMM BTEC).
The course promises to let participants ‘compete in events in the UK and overseas’ and take one of six scholarship opportunities worth £2,000 to fund their career in esports.
Staffordshire University – which already offers games design and development courses – says it will have a ‘a dedicated Esports Lab and Pro Gamer training facility’ with all the latest industry standard software and hardware.
“The BA (Hons) eSports focuses on the business of eSports. You will learn how to host small and large scale events, create business plans to develop teams, create online communities and promote your events through digital marketing.”
It also says that its academics come from a variety of backgrounds, including marketing, games design, interactive media technology, event management and esports practitioners. There will also be guest visitors and lecturers.
The first course gets underway in 2018. First-year tuition fees are £9,250 for UK and European students, or £10,900 for international students.
A course description on the UCAS website reads as follows: “The BA (Hons) eSports focuses on the business of eSports. You will learn how to host small and large scale events for single player and multi-player teams, create business plans to develop teams, create online communities and promote your events through digital marketing.
“Staffordshire University is considered to be one of the largest and best games universities in the UK. In 2016 we were considered the best place in the UK to study games design and development by ALPHR – the on-line branch of PC Pro.
“We also have a long history of event management courses with feedback via NSS and SVS indicating a high level of student satisfaction.
“The success in these two areas will see a unique partnership between games and events to create a truly outstanding experience in the UK market.”
There’s more info on the Staffordshire University website.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
