University of Auckland gears up for Esports opportunities

“Esports is a massive industry not only for gamers but for supporting industries such as event management, media broadcasting, game development and creative arts,” he adds. “By creating the arena, the students get a flavour of what it would be like and can explore career opportunities that are beyond traditional roles in the market.”

The university is also exploring how they might incorporate Esports into the academic curriculum and research.

“Universities in the USA and UK are incorporating Esports in academia,” says Kumar. “There are papers around game development and software engineering, so we want to ensure we support and guide our academics in this new era, and at the same time support the students to not only get exposure to the arena but understand the academic aspects of the industry.”

There may be possibilities for research from various disciplines as well, he adds. That could be everything from health science or computer science students doing research on game programming and analysis to creative arts students designing game characters.

UoA has been engaging with several universities, including Waikato and the University of Cincinnati to get ideas of what has and hasn’t worked with their Esports arenas, which has helped cement their approach to setting up the arena currently open eight hours a day, with a view to expand later in the evening.

“Physical access and security were a large consideration that we undertook when choosing the location of the arena, which is in a prime spot of our city campus and a hub to most key faculty buildings,” says Kumar. “There are multiple entry points from which you can come to the arena’s main entrance and our campus security team’s office is opposite on Symonds Street, should they need to intervene quickly.”

The arena, which currently has capacity for 50 users a day, is frequently booked out by students and he adds they have measures to ensure pastoral care is in place especially if a student is spending a lot of time in the arena. 

Longer-term, the team wants to expand the arena to the new recreation centre that is currently being built next door.

“At the moment, the plans for that are still being drawn up but it could be an extension of the current arena, which could largely be our broadcasting and viewing area,” he says. “It could also look to host elevated events which otherwise would need to be hosted at facilities such as Trusts Stadium or Spark Arena. We’re already running competitions but we’re looking at hosting world-class competitions and bringing in famous e-athletes to our shores. UoA believes that it has a full ecosystem to support these competitions.”

With the Esports industry on track to make more money than many other sporting codes, it’s a worthy goal to have.