The Collegiate Star League, an organization that does a college Starcraft 2 League with teams from universities around the country, announced that the rights to the league have been purchased by Korean-based Azubu.
With this acquisition, Azubu will be holding the first global collegiate league with university students from around the world. They will participate for the biggest prize pool in collegiate eSport history, $182,000 split between Starcraft 2 and League of Legends. To learn more, Mobafire.com did an exclusive interview with the Global eSports Manager of Azubu Kevin Kwon and the Head Administrator of Collegiate Star League Duran Parsi.
According to Kevin Kwon, he and Azubu want to give the Amateur players a better chance to get to the top players because at the moment the focus is more on the players who are already there.
- "Right now eSports is just focused on that top level of gamers, that elite group that is hard to break into. As we aim at the university students and give them opportunities to realistically aspire to become professional gamers, this elite group doesn't seem that hard to get into any more. By opening eSports up to more than just the elite group of top professional gamers, the hope is that the mainstream gets behind this that much more, and eSports continues to make that big push into the open with this next step"
Duran Parsi, a CSL head admin for the last three years and a person with a large managerial experience with StarCraft teams like Fnatic and LighT, is also positive of the future, saying that the Collegiate Star League has the real potential to convert eSports from a "niche" entertainment to "something more mainstream", shooting high for renowned and major media.
- "My personal expectation is to exceed Azubu's expectations! I also want this to be the biggest event ever and am going to put 100% of my effort into making that happen. I really want to see someone like CNN or the NY Times cover the event. I think recently there has been a growing interest in gaming and if we can show that: a) there are very successful students that are also able to juggle successful gaming careers, and b) students can earn tuition scholarships and big prize purses just by pursing a hobby while still being in school, they will want to cover that."
The registration begins on the second October and the matches will played from November till January. The finals will be hold in Southern California from the second to the third February 2013.
Source: Mobafire.com
