University of Toronto Students Can Get E-Sports Scholarship

Canadian undergraduate students who play competitive gaming will be able to receive an e-sports grant from the University of Toronto from next year. The alumnus Victor Xin has set up this scholarship and wants to support students who participate in e-sports with it.

Students may be eligible for the scholarship if they are a member of the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Engineering. In addition, interested students must have achieved a relatively high average grade for their subjects. Finally, participants should also regularly participate in game-related extracurricular activities. The first scholarship will be awarded in the fall of 2018.

With the grant, alumnus Victor Xin wants to prevent students who show leadership and development in e-sports from not being recognized. Xin believes that society should always reward leadership qualities, regardless of the context in which they manifest themselves. He hopes that in the future e-sports will be considered more like ordinary sport and will attract more attention.

The University of Toronto is not the first North American university to institute such a scholarship. In 2014, the Robert Morris University of Chicago introduced a scholarship for students active in League of Legends. A year later, similar scholarships were offered by the University of Pikeville in Kentucky, Maryville University in St. Louis, and Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

The introduction of more and more e-sports grants fits in with the development of e-sports as a growing and increasingly lucrative sport. According to a report from Newzoo last year, the global esports industry generated nearly half a billion dollars in revenue in 2016. In 2019, that could even exceed $1 billion.