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NACE Announces Strategic Partnership with Skillshot Media For Comprehensive Collegiate Esports Program Offering $16M in Scholarships Annually
| | Thursday, February 20th, 2020 | NAC eSports Staff

NACE Announces Strategic Partnership with Skillshot Media For Comprehensive Collegiate Esports Program Offering $16M in Scholarships Annually

Together, the organizations will advance collegiate esports governance, scholarships, competition, live event production, and commercialization.

KANSAS CITY, MO. — February 20, 2020 —  The National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE), a nonprofit membership association and the only governing body of collegiate esports in North America, today announced their strategic partnership with Skillshot Media, esports infrastructure provider and agency, to offer collegiate competition, event production, and rights commercialization.

NACE is the association of college varsity esports programs, with over 200 member universities contributing over $16 million annually in esports scholarships.  Skillshot Media has produced and licensed esports competition and events in North America for over 5 years, across numerous titles and genres, with over 1 billion video views.           

“Skillshot Media powered our initial collegiate competitions for CS:GO, Smite, and other titles.  After hearing our member school appetite for more competition, we considered many partners, and Skillshot was the clear choice for a strategic partner based on shared vision and capabilities,” said Michael Brooks, NACE Executive Director.  “We are thrilled to offer more game titles and more live events, including collegiate Fortnite this spring and many more games to come in the fall.”

Todd Harris, Skillshot CEO, added, “NACE member schools are the true pioneers and thought leaders in collegiate esports, the schools who are committing scholarship dollars, coaches, and facilities, and are committed to positive and balanced outcomes for their student-athletes.  We’re excited to partner with NACE to scale esports to colleges nationwide – more schools, more game titles, more events.  With our infrastructure, production capability and publisher relationships we aim to provide value to participating schools, the competing teams, and also importantly our partnered game publishers.  Beyond competition, together we are also developing governance and internship opportunities for students wishing to enter the esports industry.”

NACE and Skillshot announced that the Spring 2020 collegiate competition includes both Fortnite and CS:GO with an invitational finals to take place at MomoCon in Atlanta, May 23rd, a festival that draws over 35,000 unique attendees.

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About NACE

The National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) is a nonprofit membership association organized by member institutions and is the only governing body of collegiate varsity esports in North America. NACE works on building the structure and providing the tools for students needed to advance at varsity-level in collegiate esports. Areas of focus include areas such as: Eligibility, Path to Graduation, Competition & Scholarships. NACE currently includes over 200 varsity esports programs of its members, accounting for nearly 90% of all varsity programs across North America.

About SKILLSHOT MEDIA

Skillshot provides turnkey esports services for leading competitive titles, including online and offline tournament organization, industry-leading esports production, active community management and authentic brand integration and consulting for partners.  Skillshot has more than five years of esports experience in hosting thousands of global competitors, paying out millions in tournament prizing and serving more than one billion esports views to date. www.skillshot.com