UK university esports body NUEL has opened up its tournaments to students based in the Republic of Ireland for the first time.
Eligible Irish universities have now been added to the NUEL’s website so that players in Ireland can register to take part in future tournaments.
NUEL said in an announcement post that it hopes this a long-term change, though it did stipulate that there may be game-specific tournament licensing restrictions from publishers which could limit a tournament to UK-only, and that community partners who run tournaments on the NUEL website are free to determine their own eligibility rules.
Qualification through NUEL for pan-European tournaments such as the University Esports Masters, will remain exclusively available to UK teams.
“We were encouraged that there was still interest in the option for students in the Republic of Ireland to participate in NUEL. Students attending universities in Northern Ireland have been able to play in both ICE and UK tournaments for years, and we believe that this has been good for community development.”
NUEL
“We hope that dedicated esports tournaments for Irish students will grow and flourish, and we’re pleased to see the launch of the Legion Collegiate tournament which was announced on September 14th,” NUEL said.
“We’ll see how things go and keep communicating with community leaders, students and other operators in this space to make sure we’re still providing a service that the community wants. At the end of the term we will review how things went and change things up if needed.”
The news comes following the closure of Irish Collegiate Esports last month.
NUEL added: “We were encouraged that there was still interest in the option for students in the Republic of Ireland to participate in NUEL. Students attending universities in Northern Ireland have been able to play in both ICE and UK tournaments (such as NUEL and NSE) for years, and we believe that this has been good for community development.”
The next main NUEL tournament is the 2021 Winter Season, running across games including Overwatch, League of Legends, CSGO, Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege, Teamfight Tactics, Rocket League and Clash Royale.
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.
