Collegiate Starleague has announced that the 2019 North American Collegiate Grand Finals will head to the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Taking place over April 26-28th, the Grand Finals will see the best collegiate players and teams from North America compete for over $100,000 (£75,624.50) in scholarships.
Acting as the culmination of the latest season, the event will include competitions for Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, NBA 2K, Street Fighter V, Super Smash Bros. Melee & Ultimate, Apex Legends, and Fortnite.
Wim Stocks, CEO & General Manager of Collegiate Starleague and WorldGaming Network commented on the announcement: “Atlantic City will be a great host city for Collegiate Starleague’s 2019 Grand Finals where we’ll be awarding more than $100,000 in scholarships to the top collegiate gamers from across the US and Canada university and college network. This year’s event will be our biggest to date, with more teams, more competitors, more games and more reasons to attend. The event will also showcase a speaker series on the business of esports, a meet and greet with key esports and sports celebrity personalities, as well as a festival with music, food and incredible entertainment.”
Twitch Student, GameStop, Jostens, Capcom, 2K Sports, Ingame Esports, and CRDA are all signed on as sponsors and partners on the Grand Finals. Through Twitch Student, CSL has added Twitch as the exclusive livestreaming and distribution partner for the event.
Robert Mulcahy, Board Chairman of CRDA added: “With the explosion in popularity of competitive video gaming, we are very excited to bring the Collegiate Starleague’s Grand Finals and additional esport events to Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall this year. This reinforces the CRDA’s commitment to attract thousands of new visitors to our destination as we continue to expand entertainment and events options.”
Other locations for the Grand Finals of the league in previous years include Anaheim in 2014, San Francisco in 2015, Austin in 2016, Toronto in 2017, and Los Angeles in 2018.
Wim Stocks will be speaking on ‘The state of collegiate esports’ roundtable at ESI New York, our upcoming esports business event on April 23rd. Be sure to secure your tickets now before it’s too late!
Esports Insider says: The amount of titles utilised in the Grand Finals allows for a whole host of students to get involved and potentially claim some of the winnings, which is obviously great. The Boardwalk Hall looks like it has potential to be a solid venue for an esports event of this size so we’re interested to see how things pan out.
