National Student Esports has just announced a new partnership with Nintendo UK, who will be sponsoring the inaugural Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament at the next British University Esports Championship and a number of other Smash activities.
The British University Esports Championship began just last year, having first taken place in October of 2018. Last year's event featured over 3,000 players from more than 500 different teams competing in tournaments for Overwatch, League of Legends, Dota 2, CS:GO, Hearthstone and Rocket League. Schools received points from teams placing in each event, which were then cumulatively added up by school. Ultimately, the University of Warwick was awarded the inaugural Esports School of the Year award as the highest scoring university competing in the tournament.
National Student Esports is a group formed in the UK in 2017 to organize esports activities, bolster school societies and aid students in finding employment in the esports industry. Jonathan Tilbury, who is the Executive Director of NSE, explained that the decision to add a Smash Ultimate tournament to this year's event was due to a high demand for its inclusion since the group first launched. Smash tournament play this year will begin on October 10th online and last for eight weeks, four of which will be dedicated to 1v1 tournament play and the other four to 3v3. The finals in December will be live, as a part of this year's University Esports Championship event, and allow players to earn points for their schools. Signups are open to all UK university students and are online.
In addition to Smash being included in the Championship event, Nintendo UK will also sponsor an additional five regional university Smash Ultimate tournaments. To incentivize school societies to host these tournaments, Nintendo UK will be providing them with Nintendo merchandise, which will presumably be given out as prizes, and ultimately draw hosts and competitors alike to take part in these smaller, regional tournaments. These will take place alongside the additional, non-Nintendo sponsored tournaments already taking place in the UK. National Student Esports has promised to release more details about the regional tournaments in the coming weeks.
Nintendo is now joining Monster Energy, Intel and Special Effects as National Student Esports' partners.
Source: Esports Insider