University of Kentucky Partners With Pro Esports Franchise on Gaming Program

(Bloomberg) -- The University of Kentucky is tapping professional esports franchise Gen.G to help build its competitive video-gaming program, a new type of partnership that will span athletics and academics.

Gen.G will help the university grow its gaming teams and consult on the development of a dedicated space on campus for gamers to train. It also will assist on the academic side, helping the school build its gaming curriculum and provide career development for current and former Kentucky students.

School officials said the gaming expansion will broaden opportunities across the institution and help attract students. It’s also an acknowledgment that esports -- video-game tournaments that can be viewed by millions of fans -- are becoming as popular in some circles as traditional sports.

“We go into a lot of high schools, a lot of communities, and one of the biggest questions they’re asking is, ‘What’s your esports strategy at U.K.?’” said Eric Monday, Kentucky’s executive vice president for finance and administration. “So this is a huge market opportunity.”

Schools across the country are exploring various ways to answer that very question. Video games are popular among young people and the specific esports audience -- diverse, well-off, interested in math and science -- makes it especially valuable for colleges.

Kentucky isn’t the first of its peers to fully embrace esports, but it’s the first to partner with a major professional franchise to do it. This would be akin to the school working with the St. Louis Cardinals to expand its baseball and physical-sciences program.

Gen.G has offices in Seoul, Los Angeles and Shanghai, and operates teams that play titles like Overwatch, Fortnite, Call of Duty and Clash Royale. Last month, the organization announced that it would launch a China-based team in the NBA’s esports league.

‘Idiosyncratic Paths’

The Kentucky deal will help the organization advance its educational mission, according to Gen.G Chief Executive Officer Chris Park.

“You’re starting to see a lot of esports team organizations pursue their own idiosyncratic paths toward what they really want to be -- whether its apparel, lifestyle brands or in other cases, just purely competitive,” Park said. “For us, we see the future of Gen.G being a brand to serve the development of young people. That goes for fans, athletes and casual gamers.”

Gen.G has its own esports academy in South Korea, which Park called the first fully integrated esports academic program in the world. Unlike team-sponsored academies in sports like soccer, the goal is not to feed Gen.G’s pro squads, but rather to help students broaden their career options in gaming.

As esports mushrooms into a $1 billion industry, colleges have taken different approaches. In 2017, the University of Utah became the first so-called “Power Five” school (named for the five richest athletic conferences) to offer scholarships. Other colleges, like the University of California, Irvine, have built esports-specific facilities for their on-campus clubs.

There are a handful of organizations that host and organize competitions between schools. Riot Games Inc., which makes League of Legends, helps fund scholarships for a number of its university partners.

Outside the NCAA

The Kentucky esports initiative will operate outside the school’s $128 million-plus athletic budget. Esports is not under the NCAA umbrella, which gives colleges more freedom to chart their own approach.

The Gen.G deal was facilitated by JMI Sports, Kentucky’s media-rights partner. Though terms weren’t announced, Monday said the school has a long history of looking to the private sector for partnerships.

To underscore the esports opportunity for Kentucky, Monday highlighted the many different parts of the school interested in the deal. That includes the college of communication, which is interested in putting on esports events, the engineering college, which is interested in classes on game design and computer science, and the college of education, which is looking at teaching through games. Even the college of medicine has inquired about getting involved.

“It’s across the entire fabric of the university,” Monday said.

Based in Lexington, the school has more than 20,000 undergraduates, making it the biggest university in the state. And it recently admitted its largest freshman class ever. Future growth, according to Monday, will come from out of state.

“We’re recruiting more and more people outside the commonwealth,” he said. “This is an opportunity to have a new discussion in new markets like New York or Virginia.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Eben Novy-Williams in New York at enovywilliam@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, Rob Golum

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