Esports

Intel Supporting High School Esports

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 04/09/21

Intel will be supporting esports in high schools. The chipmaker has signed on as a sponsor with Generation Esports (GenE), a company that runs a competitive high school league, providing prizes, "loot crates" and promotion for the events. Tournament play will culminate in the $50,000 "Intel Winners Circle Tournament" this summer.

Prizes for that will be given as scholarships to students and as cash to all participating school esports teams to support their operations. Participating teams will be chosen from among the top schools in the preceding seasonal gaming tournaments and will face off, to play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Overwatch and Valorant.

This isn't the first foray into school esports for Intel. The company was a co-sponsor of "Build an Esports Lab" campaign, in which 3,700 North American high schools applied to receive a state-of-the-art esports lab installation. That program was run by the GenE's High School Esports League (HSEL) and supported by the Army National Guard.

Twenty-five winning schools were announced in March. Each school is targeted to receive an esports lab with six high-specification gaming systems, , ASUS TUF Gaming laptops with 10th Gen Intel Core i9-10850K processors, 1TB Intel SSD 760p M.2 storage and ASUS Phoenix GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards, as well accompanying mechanical keyboards, wireless headsets and gaming mice also provided by ASUS.

As part of its participation, Intel has committed to collaborating with HSEL on development of STEM learning curriculum that educates students on how to build and maintain their esports lab and provides career and college advice.

"Partnering with [Intel] will not only help us deliver a thrilling spectacle in the Intel Winners Circle Tournament but also ensure that we can continue giving high school students the academic opportunities and resources that come with our various esports initiatives," said Mason Mullenioux, CEO and co-founder of Generation Esports, in a press release.

"Esports in education continues to grow every year and is a key focus for us at Intel," added Marcus Kennedy, general manager of Intel's gaming and esports segment. "We are excited to be supporting students and schools as they build out their esports programs and look forward to the upcoming tournaments this year!"