{"id":12417,"date":"2025-06-09T09:10:46","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T14:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin-new\/?post_type=campus_story&p=12417"},"modified":"2025-06-09T09:10:46","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T14:10:46","slug":"the-growth-of-esports-at-uw-madison","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/the-growth-of-esports-at-uw-madison\/","title":{"rendered":"The growth of esports at UW\u2013Madison"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Students compete in Valorant, a multiplayer video game, in the Esport Lounge at the Bakke Recreation & Wellbeing Center, Photo by Xiaomeng Shen\/UW\u2013Madison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While esports isn\u2019t usually the first thing that comes to mind when you think of athletics, there are a lot of skills that you need to be a good esports athlete.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a big mental aspect of esports, but part of it is just mechanical skills, like how well you aim and stuff,\u201d says UW sophomore Arsalan Ahmad, an officer for the Madison eSports Club. \u201cGenetics plays a huge role in other sports, a lot of times it\u2019s just \u2018oh are you tall enough to play basketball.\u2019 With esports there is a lot of adaptation, it\u2019s not only that you have to grind, but you also have to adapt to changing metas (most effective tactics available) like traditional sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahmad, who\u2019s studying computer science and data science, competes on the club\u2019s top team for Valorant.<\/p>\n

Esports, or playing video games competitively, has grown rapidly into a global industry. Games like League of Legends, Valorant, Apex Legends and Counter-Strike have become some of the most popular, with their top athletes being treated like celebrities, complete with dedicated training facilities and top tier sponsorship deals.<\/p>\n

UW\u2013Madison has also started providing more opportunities and spaces for esports on campus. While UW doesn\u2019t have a varsity-level esports team like some universities, student-led groups such as the Madison Esports Club offer competition across multiple games.<\/p>\n

The Madison Esports Club first started off as a group of students who gathered to play popular games such as DOTA, Starcraft and Hearthstone. In early 2020 the organization was adopted under the University Recreation and Wellbeing as a Sports Club, bringing it more funding and opportunities to compete against other teams.<\/p>\n

The organization hosts teams for specific games, such as League of Legends, Valorant and Call of Duty. But students in the club don\u2019t have to compete on a team \u2014 they can just find groups of other students to play games for fun.<\/p>\n

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\"Students<\/p>\n

Esports, or playing video games competitively, has grown rapidly into a global industry. Games like League of Legends, Valorant, Apex Legends and Counter-Strike have become some of the most popular.\u00a0Photo by Xiaomeng Shen\/UW\u2013Madison<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Since COVID, gaming and video games has become one of the largest entertainment industries in the world,\u201d said club president Eddie Kustner. \u201cIt\u2019s good to have more opportunities for people who enjoy video games to go out and meet other people who enjoy video games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Madison Esports Club competes in a variety of collegiate competitions locally and on a more national scale, including the Big Ten league and the Wisconsin Esports Conference, which includes other colleges in Wisconsin. The Big Ten is offering competitions in Super Smash Bros and Overwatch for the Spring 2025 semester, and the Madison Esports team is competing in both.<\/p>\n

Outside of the team itself, the Bakke Recreation and Wellbeing Center has opened up a dedicated Esports lounge fitted with computers optimized for gaming. Esports has also been offered as a part of intramural sports, with semester-long competitions and shorter tournaments.<\/p>\n

\u201cFostering local competition is really good. Also just connecting with other students on campus,\u201d says Arsalan Ahmad. \u201cIt\u2019s a great way to socialize with other students, just like it is with other intramural sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kustner would like to see esports grow here. \u201cWe have an esports room and it\u2019s great that we have that, that\u2019s a great first step,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It can be difficult to convince up-and-coming esports athletes to compete on a collegiate level because the prime age for gaming is on the younger side. Most talented players make their professional debut before they even graduate from high school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe long-term goals are to support the team and to provide more opportunities for the community to grow. The most successful esports communities in college have a very strong social scene and they have physical areas where people want to come, which fosters community\u201d Kustner says.<\/p>\n

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Written by Serena Wang<\/p>\n

Link to original story: https:\/\/news.wisc.edu\/the-growth-of-esports-at-uw-madison\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While esports isn\u2019t usually the first thing that comes to mind when you think of athletics, there are a lot of skills that you need to be a good esports athlete. \u201cThere is a big mental aspect of esports, but part of it is just mechanical skills, like how well you aim and stuff,\u201d says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":12418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[103],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-12417","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-madison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/12417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=12417"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=12417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}