University of Essex and University of East Anglia esports teams prepare to do battle at Derby Day 2022 for the first time

Dom Sacco, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 28/04/2022

Update: The University of Essex won in Valorant, Rocket League and League of Legends, with the University of East Anglia winning CSGO. This meant Essex won 3-1 in esports overall, however UEA won the Derby Day overall when including other sports.

Original article: Two UK universities are about to go head-to-head in their first sports derby day in two years – and esports has been added to the event for the first time.

Students from the University of Essex will play the University of East Anglia tomorrow (Wednesday April 27th 2022) across a number of titles: League of Legends, Rocket League, CSGO and Valorant.

Esports will count as one activity on the day, though it is made up of several tournaments.

Derby Day 2022 will take place at the at the Student Union nightclub Sub Zero, which is located at the University of Essex’s Colchester Campus.

There will be a stage, a live audience and a broadcast production streamed live from the Essex Video Game Society (VGS) Twitch channel.

UK university esports body NSE is also on board supplying PCs for the event.

The event is an inter-university sports tournament, featuring activities like archery, basketball, cycling, dodgeball, fencing, golf, netball, swimming, esports and lots more. It usually takes place once a year, but has missed the past two years due to the pandemic.

The esports schedule on the day is as follows:

Essex Video Games Society president and League of Legends esports analyst, Richard ‘LionheartXL’ Sykora (who is part of the Intel FutureGen 2022 Cohort), told Esports News UK: “We are slowly approaching the time when esports are going to be as well respected as traditional sports and this is the next step.”

The Essex Video Game Society previously ran other esports events for charity – it recently raised £600 for Children with Cancer UK. The society also has plans to get esports recognised as a sport at the university in order to unlock funding.

In other recent UK university esports news, three student Rocket League teams from the UK recently qualified for the Collegiate World Championship.

There’s more info on the Essex/East Anglia Derby Day 2022 on the event’s website.

Dom Sacco, Senior Editor

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He has almost two decades of experience in journalism, and left Esports News UK in June 2025. 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 also previously worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation.

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