College esports in the United States began around 2009. Various schools began forming esports clubs to play any number of video games in collegiate tournaments. While there are thousands of schools that participate in collegiate esports competitions, in 2018, there were at least 73 college varsity esports programs, and by 2019 over 130 college varsity programs.
Collegiate Starleague
Collegiate Starleague began in 2009 as the first official intercollegiate gaming organization in the world, with 25 schools participating in their inaugural competition of the game, at which the UC Berkeley team took home the victory. Since then CSL has expanded into a variety of games based on their popularity any given year and it claims to host over 1,800 colleges and universities worldwide with 55,000 cumulative players actively competing in their league.
Tespa
began as the Texas eSports Association at the University of Texas at Austin. After a series of successful events, Tespa was acquired by and became a subsidiary of Blizzard Entertainment in 2013.. Tespa has since grown to employ a team of over 80 students and graduates across the United States and Canada. Tespa has transitioned to support primarily titles owned by Blizzard Entertainment. As of 2019, they hosted competitions for Overwatch, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and StarCraft II. In 2017 Tespa touted 220 official chapters, with competing teams from over 500 schools. In May 2019, Tespa hosted the Collegiate Esports Championship in Houston, Texas.
The Electronic Gaming Federation was founded by Rochester Institute of Technology alumni Tyler Schrodt in 2015. More recently the gaming organization runs tournaments at the nation level for the High School scene and Collegiate scene. The EGF hosts a regular season for Rocket League and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The EGF partners up with Division I conferences to have colleges from those conferences face off against each other in competition. They also have a conference called the "Power 5" which includes universities in some of the "Power 5" conferencesThe EGF will begin a new competition on April 20th, 2020 called the "Power Series", for Division I that will focus on Rocket League.
Starting in Fall 2011, Riot Games partnered with Collegiate Starleague in their inaugural collegiate tournament season. CSL continued to run Riot's collegiate tournaments through the 2013 CSL Finals. In Fall 2013, Riot Games announced their official North American Collegiate Championship program, which was run by a combination of the three organizations CSL, IvyLoL, and North American Challenger League. In 2016, the NACC evolved into the University League of Legends Campus Series, run by CSL, after IvyLoL and NACL stopped functioning and many of their staff were hired as Riot Games employees to orchestrate their collegiate activities. In the Fall of 2017, Riot Games announced that it would rebrand again as College League of Legends and switch official partners from CSL to Battlefy. In May 2019, Riot Games announced the formation of the Riot Scholastic Association of America as the governing body for collegiate and high school esports for League of Legends. With these changes Riot also sought out collegiate conference partnerships that allowed schools to compete in their respective conferences. Some of these conferences include the Big East, Big Sky, MAAC, Mountain West, and Peach Belt.
was founded in July 2016 and is a nonprofit membership association driven by colleges/universities in the United States that have and are developing official varsity esport programs on campus. NACE's primary goal is to develop and grow collegiate-level esports and advocate for members to create varsity programs that give the opportunity of scholarships and dedication to a sport that may not be seen as traditional. Since it focuses on the logistical elements of the varsity program, NACE is game-title-agnostic, and supports collegiate programs in competing in any video game title they choose. As of 2019, NACE supported more than 130 member schools.
Esports Collegiate Conference
A conference created on June 10th, 2020 by member institutions of the Mid-American Conference.
