MEGA, the company behind The Esports Awards, this week fully unveiled The Scholars, a collegiate gaming awards ceremony that will celebrate the brightest and best from the student esports community. The award ceremony will take place on November 28th at Resorts World Las Vegas and will be supported by the PWR UP Collegiate Gaming Conference presented by GamerTech® on the 27th and 28th, the ultimate networking and conference event meticulously tailored for students and professionals alike.
“We’ve had this in motion for really the last 36 months as something that we’d like to do as a complement to The Esports Awards,” says Mike Ashford, Co-Founder of MEGA. “The Scholars is effectively the collegiate gaming awards. It’s our attempt to establish a platform for recognition in the academic space for competitive gamers, whether that’s university, collegiate, varsity or other programs. It’s a chance for us to celebrate the achievements and build pathways for some of those gamers to go into vocations that suit their skill sets.”
After successfully adding collegiate categories to The Esports Awards in 2020, there have been thousands of nominations and even more votes for the collegiate-focused awards, and now is the perfect time to launch a standalone awards event.
“This is basically an opportunity for us to invite all the students, all the faculties, all the collegiate tournament organizers to come together to celebrate the scene, but also to continue to represent that scene, to provoke thought leadership to promote the regulation and so much more,” says Ashford. “We have a whole business conference on the day, focused on collegiate gaming and making sure that the industry has the right pathways, the right opportunities.”
The event will run alongside The Esports Awards in Las Vegas this November, with The Scholars award ceremony and PWR UP Collegiate Gaming Conference presented by GamerTech® taking place in the days prior. This will give attendees the chance to network not only with their peers in the collegiate space but also with the biggest names from the wider gaming industry who will be in town.
“Some of the feedback collegiate attendees gave us last year is that actually getting to meet some of the attendees such as a Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, who stayed and gave them all the time of day to give them advice, share war stories, and sort of get into it, gave them the motivation and then the inspiration to sort of push on in their careers,” says Ashford.
At The Esports Awards 2022 the University of Hawai’i won the Esports Collegiate Program of the Year presented by Blinkfire Analytics award, and less than a year later the program has already benefited from the win.
“With UH Esports winning the best collegiate program for 2022, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has been extremely happy with the distinction,” explains Nyle Sky Kauweloa – Director of UH Esports. “Returning to campus for fall, as a result, I was informed that our program is getting a second esports arena on the UH Mānoa campus, where we will be situated in the newly renovated Student Success Center (an $80 million dollar renovation of our library). I am thankful for The Esports Awards in recognizing our program with this award, and in selecting a program like ours, has expanded the scope, measure, and definition of what counts as a top collegiate program.”
With the introduction of The Scholars, the team hopes that even more programs, companies and of course students can benefit from the recognition the awards will offer and that the collegiate scene will continue to grow.
Tickets for The Scholars are available now and are free for everyone!
