The UK’s National University Esports League (NUEL) has responded to the founding of a separate organisation which also hopes to grow university esports.
The president of the Swansea Gaming Society, Declan Murphy, set up Foundation a few weeks ago, and hopes to receive the backing of the National Union of Students (NUS) by the end of this year.
His idea is to help gaming societies grow their esports scenes and for more universities to compete against one another live at LAN events, without the worry of things like travel costs.
Of course, the NUEL is well established in this space, and has been pushing for better esports support in its own way over the years.
“We are continually pushing ourselves to reach our goal of bringing what we all love to an even wider audience.”
Nolly, NUEL operations director
Responding to the news, NUEL operations director Niall Hayward (aka Nolly) said in this update post on the NUEL website: “We are always inspired by the passion that individual members of the UK collegiate esports scene show in improving the scene whatever form it may take. It makes us want to try even harder.
“We are continually pushing ourselves to reach our goal of bringing what we all love to an even wider audience. It is happening, but it can be a frustratingly slow process.
“As someone who was part of the University of York’s gaming society ‘Fragsoc’ during the ‘points at varsity‘ (Roses) fiasco, I learnt the hard way how tedious and disappointing these obstructions can be. But it is not a tale of defeat.
“Esports is now recognised at the Roses varsity, Oxford and Cambridge have held multiple esports varsity events and more will follow. With the help and support of Riot, Twitch, but most importantly other students, we can build collegiate esports into something that will be its own justification.”
The NUEL also announced it is in the process of acquiring several new sponsors, which it hopes will help the NUEL create ‘substantial’ support packages for societies and the events they host.
It’s handing out free League of Legends goodies and says it’s helping societies to run their own broadcasts, host their own LANs and promote events.
At EGX this weekend just gone, the NUEL hosted a varsity match on the Twitch stage.
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.
