Esports.edu: An Inventory and Analysis of Global Higher Education Esports Academic Programming and Curricula

The Esports.edu study inventories and analyzes higher education esports programming worldwide, applying Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations Theory to treat esports degree programs as an emerging educational innovation. Its central finding is that esports academic programming has expanded rapidly, with 95 programs (bachelor's, master's, certificate, diploma, and minor) offered by 74 institutions, concentrated in North America and Western Europe. The study notes that no prior empirical research had examined these curricula, and it positions its inventory against an industry whose 2019 revenue was estimated at nearly $25 billion.

The inventory finds that business and management dominate the field, accounting for roughly 80 percent of programs and 83 percent of bachelor's offerings, while broadcasting, coaching, and performance remain comparatively underserved. The authors catalog 404 esports-specific courses, with business/management, introduction/history, and media production leading in frequency, and report that programs averaged 5.7 esports-specific courses, with bachelor's degrees averaging 7.3 and minors 3.2. Program start dates cluster between 2017 and 2021, though many dates are approximated from media reports, limiting timeline precision.

The study's analysis is critical of the practice of "esportifying" curricula, in which institutions add one or two esports courses to an existing program and rebrand it. The authors argue this may disserve students and feed skepticism, and they call for an accrediting body, since no standards for esports education currently exist. They also caution that course counts are an imperfect proxy for quality, and they acknowledge limitations including language barriers, a U.S. and French sourcing bias, and potentially dated data. Overall, the study concludes that the strongest programs will likely distinguish themselves over time.