The final stage of the 2021/22 Amazon University Esports tournament in the UK and Ireland has officially kicked off.
Student teams will be doing battle in the 2022 Spring Split in the hopes of qualifying for the grand finals. The split is put together through a joint effort between UK esports university body, NUEL, and tournament platform provider GGTech.
The split will feature games including CSGO, League of Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant, Rocket League, Teamfight Tactics and Clash Royale.
Organisers say more than 800 teams from across the country have signed up for the spring split, representing a total of 104 universities, and that this has broken previous spring split records.
The news comes after Amazon University Esports reported record numbers in its UK/Ireland Winter 2021 Season, with more than 1,150 teams of students from 105 universities taking part in that.
Throughout the Winter split, organisers say there was also audience growth in Amazon University Esports across Europe, with more than 40,000 people viewing the finals online and 6m viewers following the qualifying tournaments held in Italy, Germany, France, the UK and Ireland through different broadcast channels (across streams, Twitch, and social media).
This current 2022 Spring Split will feature teams representing some of the biggest universities in the UK and Ireland such as Warwick, Imperial College London, Durham, Loughborough, Cardiff University, University of Glasgow and Technological University Dublin.
NUEL MD David Jackson told Esports News UK: “One welcome change for Spring this year, much demanded by players, was that it’s now actually possible for teams to qualify for Varsity from Spring – unlike in previous years where teams could only qualify by placing highly in the Winter season. So in addition to just generally seeing overall growth this year, that extra qualification possibility may have helped (result in growth) too.”
There will also be the Women and Non-Binary Valorant and League of Legends tournaments, the first of their kind to be established in the UK, aimed at giving visibility and a positive environment for female and non-binary gamers.
“They’ve been incredibly fun,” said Katie Waring, a player in the Women and Non-Binary Valorant tournament. “They’ve led me to meet a lot of amazing people and I’ve made a few friends out of it that I talk to outside of the tourney. It’s very friendly and a nice change from the male-dominated tournaments and I feel a lot more included in this one.”
The Grand Finals of Varsity – including CSGO, League of Legends, Rainbow Six Siege and Valorant – will take place remotely on April 12th, 13th and 14th 2022.
Students will get the chance to take a share of the competition prize pool, which this split will reach £24,105 worth of prizes including Amazon vouchers, winners’ merch and paid-for trips to esports events. Across both the Winter and Spring season, organisers have just over £32,000 worth of prizing budgeted. Total prizing is for all NUEL competitive tournaments, not just the Varsity ones.
On the finals being remote, NUEL MD David Jackson said: “We’re keen to bring NUEL Live back, but a combination of factors – namely scheduling challenges, budget and the lingering impact of omicron – made us decide to keep our powder dry for next year and make sure we’re putting on an awesome experience for the players. For this year’s finals, we’re looking at what we can do to make the broadcast of the tournament a bit special, so hopefully will be more to talk about on that in the coming weeks.”
Additionally, the leading teams of the spring tournaments in League of Legends, Rocket League, Teamfight Tactics and Clash Royale will qualify for the Amazon University Esports Masters, where they will get the chance to represent their country and their university against top student teams from across Europe.
Amazon University Esports competition partners including Riot Games, Intel and Twitch Student.
Outside of the usual tournaments, Amazon University Esports and NUEL support gaming communities at more than 80 freshers fairs, and have helped to launch new community tournament nights, workshops and incentives to support student-run charity events, as well as the ‘Big Name on Camera’ campaign aimed at supporting student creators.
The other university esports body in the UK, NSE, recently announced a partnership with Insomnia Gaming Festival to host its university esports finals at i68, which takes place in April 2022.
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.
