In early 2022, the Ontario Government launched a new C$1,000,000 scholarship for students involved in esports and various other programs relating to the esports industry, such as game development, innovation, and marketing. The program was launched to give post-secondary students a greater chance of attending a good school, and it will help them over a 24-month period.
Here is a closer look at what the esports scholarship program means. According to students, it’s a great move by the Ontario Government and a positive outlook for the future. Many say they are thrilled that the provincial government has decided to invest in esports this way and that it’s a step in the right direction.
What are esports?
In a nutshell, esports is a form of competition/tournament that involves using video games being played across a variety of devices, such as PC, Xbox, and Playstation. The organised events play host to individual/single-player tournaments and much bigger multiplayer tournaments, and each team or individual is usually a professional video gamer who competes to win a prize. The prizes up for grabs can include tournament/player ranking points, a trophy, a cash prize, or some other type of real-world prize, such as the latest gadgets, a car, a luxury holiday, or tickets to a major sporting event.
Esports is classed as a spectator sport, which you can watch either in person at one of several major stadiums, arenas or online, either on YouTube or at one of a growing number of trusted esports streaming sites. Did you know that it’s also now possible for Canadians to place a real money wager on a variety of mainstream esports in the same way you can play classic casino games and slots at any fully licensed Ontario online casino? You can also watch esports as the action unfolds at many of these same trusted igaming sites.
Examples of today’s most popular esports games that you can place a wager on right now are Dotas 2, League of Legends, Starcraft, Starcraft 2, Quake, and Rainbow 6, and some of the major professional esports leagues that you can bet are the Intel Extreme Masters Qualifiers (EU, NA, and SA), the BLAST Premier, the ESL Pro League, and the CCT South American Series, to name just a few. Some of the popular teams to bet on are FaZe Clan, Evil Geniuses, Heroic, and BIG.
What types of bets are available in esports?
Unlike most major sports, which have hundreds of betting markets per event, esports is fairly limited when it comes to the number of betting markets that are available. For example, the main market is an outright bet (e.g., the winner of a single match or tournament). If you were to place an in-play wager right now, you would see that FaZe Clan are currently priced at -134 in American/Moneyline odds (which is 9/4 in UK fractional odds and 1.74 in European decimal odds) to win Group C of the BLAST Premier League.
Is Ontario’s new esports scholarship program a good thing?
For those who can’t afford to follow their passion in this field, the scholarship will give them a chance to enter the field that, perhaps otherwise, they would never have been able to venture in. Therefore, for students that are looking to pursue their future in esports, the esports scholarship is a fantastic thing. There’s currently big money in esports, generating billions of dollars each year, and it is becoming more mainstream as time goes by.
