The University of York campus will host the UK’s largest university-level CSGO LAN event in November.
Eight of the top university teams from across the UK will represent their universities in the FragSoc CSGO Invitational. Four signed up so far include the University of York, Lancaster University, De Montfort University and the University of Derby. The remaining four will be invited over the coming months.
The GSL-style double elimination group stages will take place on November 25th and four teams will advance to the best-of-three semi-finals on the 26th. Those and the grand final will take place in front of a live audience in York’s Law & Management Building at the Heslington East campus; attendance is free.
While there’s no prizes as yet, partly due to there being no entry fee for participants, organisers are seeking sponsors to provide some kit to the winning team.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen CSGO action at a university level, of course. The National University Esports League holds tournaments, and the NUEL Live LAN, and there’s things like King of the North too.
“I believe university esports has the potential to provide grassroots foundations for UK esports – and hopefully having LAN events like this can help develop more talent.”
Jordan Reece, FragSoc
There’s also an esports element of the York/Lancaster university varsity (which Lancaster won last year, and York won this year).
While FragSoc is not technically the biggest university esports LAN overall, organisers say they’re definitely the largest ever held for CSGO.
And things are improving at a university level. Some uni esports societies are able to provide funding to transport players to LANs, for example. And hopefully events like this can encourage more student unions to do the same.
“Since coming to York I’ve been trying develop our CSGO scene in FragSoc, which has come along great,” organiser Jordan “SynonymForTree” Reece told Esports News UK.
“From there, the natural progression was to turn our attention to helping the wider university scene in general grow, giving players who usually only play online in NUEL a chance of playing at a LAN event.
“I believe university esports has the potential to provide grassroots foundations for UK esports – and hopefully having LAN events like this can help develop more talent.”
Links
Website: https://fragsocinvitational.com/
Twitch: www.twitch.tv/fragsoc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1914462922155230
Image credit: Dhillan Lad
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.
