GameSquare Esports Inc (CSE:GSQ) (FRA:29Q1) officially congratulated the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) for winning the first-ever Collegiate Esports Invitational, a collegiate Fortnite invitational tournament produced by Gaming Community Network, part of the GameSquare group of companies.
UMBC, representing the America East conference, defeated Cal State Fullerton of the Big West conference and took home the $5,000 first prize. Combined, the two squads took home the lion’s share of the $10,000 pool and a plethora of Razer products, including keyboards, mice and headsets. Drexel University knocked off Santa Clara University to finish in third place.
GCN, an independent media group dedicated to gaming and esports produced the event along with full-service sports and entertainment firm Van Wagner and Jersey Mike’s Subs. The Collegiate Esports Invitational series was the first major collegiate esports event to bring colleges and universities together across conferences to compete for a national championship.
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UMBC, also known for producing the only 16-seed team to ever win an NCAA tournament basketball game, and Cal State Fullerton earned their spots in the finals by winning their respective conference tournaments on May 22.
The 10 conference tournaments and the championship garnered more than 651,000 live views, including streams on twitch.tv/CollegiateEsportsInv, the company said, including 256,000 unique viewers during the championship alone. The tournament was also carried by GCN across more than 85 gaming and esports websites, which deliver GCN with 65 million monthly unique viewers total in the US.
“Huge congrats goes out to UMBC to be crowned as the Fortnite champion as they had to earn their way to top in a tournament featuring 110 colleges and universities across 10 NCAA conferences,” GCN Chief Marketing Officer Chris Kindt said. “Throughout this tournament, the students put on a terrific show, and we are extremely grateful to Jersey Mike’s Subs and Razer for seeing our vision. In the future, we want to build a collegiate esports landscape that is inclusive and will crown a true national champion.”
This was the first of the Collegiate Esports Invitational series that will continue this fall with two other tournaments, the company said.
“It feels incredible winning the Collegiate Esports Invitational and I am very excited for the future tournaments,” said Kiran “VenomFN” Yarlagadda, a senior computer science major at UMBC. “I will use the tournament earnings for tuition next semester and anything that remains I am planning on keeping in a savings account. What separated us as a duo from our competitors was our ability to get eliminations early in the game, in addition to being able to end fights quickly through coordinated fighting.”
Yarlagadda's teammate also weighed in.
“It feels amazing to win any tournament but winning a tournament this big is not an everyday opportunity and I cannot wait to play more of these in the future,” said Arveen “Archer” Zarrabi, a sophomore bioinformatics major. “Kiran is a fantastic teammate that always kept it positive, and we put enough practice in that we played together really effectively.”
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