UK university esports body NSE (National Student Esports) and Nintendo UK have today announced a new Splatoon 3 University Championship.
This new partnership will provide university students with a range of Splatoon 3 activities, including in-person and online tournaments across the UK, with a grand final at Insomnia 70 at the Birmingham NEC in April, as well as a range of Nintendo UK supported online community events over the spring season.
The Splatoon 3 University Championship will see two regional events, as well as an online tournament dedicated to the UK student community.
University teams will ‘ink off’ against one another, with the top teams from the regional events and the online tournament then progressing to the live grand final, which will take place at Insomnia Gaming Festival from April 7th to 9th as mentioned. Here, one university team will be crowned champions as part of NSE’s British University Esports Championship finals.
Sign-ups for the Splatoon 3 University Championship will be open to UK university students in February, with events happening from March onwards.
Splatoon 3 University Championship follows other NSE Nintendo tournaments
NSE has a track record of showcasing competitive Nintendo Switch titles to the UK student community. Prior to the Splatoon 3 University Championship, NSE worked with Nintendo UK in 2019 to deliver a series of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournaments throughout the UK, while NSE did its own series of Animal Crossing: New Horizons activities and events in 2020 to provide online social interaction while most of the community was in lockdown.
More recently in the latter half of 2022, NSE ran the Mario Strikers Battle League Football University Circuit delivering over a thousand matches, three regional events across the UK and one final event at the University of Warwick.
As part of NSE’s regular tournament offering which takes place across Spring, NSE will continue to run several Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournaments and other online student community events based on a variety of Nintendo Switch games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Sam Hibbert, Business Director at NSE, said:
“Splatoon 3 has a core following and we want to help bring new players to the game whilst providing more opportunities for students to compete. Running in-person events is a staple for NSE and we’re thrilled to have Nintendo UK’s support. The NSE team can’t wait to provide more great experiences to university students.”
Sam Hibbert, NSE
Kalpesh Tailor, Head of Communications at Nintendo UK, added: “Nintendo UK and NSE have a joint ambition to bring communities together that have a passion for video games. We’re proud to support NSE again and bring the latest addition in the Splatoon series to university students, offering more opportunities for the engaged student gaming community to compete, online and in-person.”
Sign-ups for NSE’s BUEC Spring 2023 season recently closed and the first week of tournaments is underway. In the 21/22 academic year, the competition saw over 2,100 teams from 100 different universities compete across more than 10 esports titles.
Splatoon 3 was released in September 2022 for the Nintendo Switch, and the Splatoon 3 University Championship is the latest esports tournament in the game.
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.
