For universities
The Business of Esports
A licensable, university-level program where students learn, build, and run real collegiate esports tournaments, taught by industry practitioners. Three standalone courses: license one, or the full program.
Certified by Education Alliance Finland · Licensable at universities worldwide
About the program
Learn the industry by building it
The Business of Esports gives students a practical command of how the esports industry works by having them build the business behind a real tournament. It is taught by industry practitioners and runs on one principle: real outputs, not examinations. Every week produces professional work, and by the end students hold a portfolio, not just a transcript line.
Learn → Build → Run
STANDALONE COURSE
The Foundation
Learn the business
Every student covers every function of running a competitive event, and each team builds its own complete tournament playbook.
3 credits · 45 hours · 15 weeks
STANDALONE COURSE
The Specialisation
Build the venture
Students specialise into functional tracks and converge their many playbooks into one unified tournament playbook.
3 credits · 45 hours · 15 weeks
STANDALONE COURSE
The Tournament
Run the league
The cohort runs that unified plan as a real, live event, delivered in professional roles and measured against real KPIs.
Flexible: short block, or 15 weeks
Coming soon
The Startup
A further course in the program, taking students from running events into launching and scaling their own esports ventures.
Curriculum overview
Three courses, one program
The Business of Esports is three standalone courses that follow a Learn, Build, Run arc. Each can be licensed on its own. Here is what each one teaches.
The Foundation · learn the business
The breadth course: 15 modules across 6 phases. Every module pairs a real-world case study with a hands-on workshop that produces a usable component of a tournament plan. Those accumulate, week by week, into a complete, launch-ready playbook.
Foundations of the esports business
M1 to M4M1
Introduction to the esports industry
Builds: a stakeholder map
M2
Marketing in esports
Builds: a campaign concept
M3
Esports event design
Builds: an event concept
M4
Tournament operations
Builds: an operations plan and bracket
Governance, people and wellness
M5 to M7M5
Rules and governance
Builds: a tournament rulebook
M6
Staffing and HR
Builds: an org chart and roles
M7
Wellness and player management
Builds: a player wellness policy
Commercial and media
M8 to M9M8
Marketing and sponsorship
Builds: a sponsorship deck
M9
Media and broadcasting
Builds: a broadcast simulation
Branding and partnerships
M10 to M11M10
Branding in esports
Builds: a brand identity pack
M11
Partnerships in esports
Builds: partnership pitch sheets
Risk, legal and infrastructure
M12 to M13M12
Law, ethics and contracts
Builds: a code of conduct and player agreement
M13
Technology and infrastructure
Builds: an infrastructure plan and budget
Integration and capstone
M14 to M15M14
Integration and pre-launch simulation
Builds: an integrated draft and readiness report
M15
Capstone, playbook finalisation
Builds: the final launch-ready playbook
A consistent five-step week
Each week is a single 3-hour session. The first three steps run inside the opening hour, the workshop fills the next two, and the reflection closes it out.
Recorded expert lecture
A short lecture from an industry practitioner, watched in class.
Live localising lecture
The local lecturer reinforces it and leads the case discussion.
Knowledge check
Five auto-graded questions through the learning platform.
Team workshop
Two hours of team work producing a real deliverable.
Individual reflection
A short reflection to consolidate the session.
Every module, anchored by a real case
Students work through actual decisions major esports organisations faced, chosen for productive friction: capable people who made defensible calls that still went wrong, so students learn to interrogate decisions, not just outcomes.
GOVERNANCE
Overwatch League
Governance ambition meets commercial reality.
INDUSTRY MODEL
T1 and the Korean machine
Why the structural model resists replication.
SPONSORSHIP
Red Bull
The holistic non-endemic model.
CONTRACTS
Tfue and FaZe Clan
The dispute that forced an industry to look at itself.
The Specialisation · build the venture
The depth course. Each student joins one of eight functional tracks, builds their department to a professional standard, and then the whole cohort negotiates their separate plans into one unified tournament playbook. Each track deepens a function first met in the Foundation.
OPERATIONS
Competition and event delivery
Builds: the operational plan the event runs on
MARKETING
Audience and community
Builds: the audience and campaign plan
SPONSORSHIP
Commercial and partnerships
Builds: the sponsorship and partnership pipeline
BROADCASTING
Media and production
Builds: the broadcast and production plan
HR & WELLNESS
People and welfare
Builds: the staffing plan and welfare policy
BRANDING
Identity and design
Builds: the brand system and asset kit
GOVERNANCE
Rules, integrity and legal
Builds: the rulebook and governance pack
TECHNOLOGY
Infrastructure
Builds: the infrastructure plan and costed budget
The Tournament · run the league
The delivery course. The cohort runs the unified plan as a real, live event, in professional roles drawn from their specialism, and the event is measured against the KPIs it set for itself. It runs two ways.
A short execution block
A few days to a few weeks
Stages the event as a celebration and showcase of the cohort's work, with a debrief to close.
Capstone credit, or a non-credit showcase
A full 15-week course
Work-integrated learning
Readiness, the live event, then full post-event analysis, with students in assessed professional roles throughout.
3 credits, and can carry internship credit
Every student holds a real delivery role
Measured against real KPIs
The cohort sets its own targets in the plan, then the live event is measured against them across every domain.
OPERATIONS
Runs to schedule
Matches completed on time, event on schedule.
AUDIENCE
Attendance and viewership
Live attendance and viewer targets met.
COMMERCIAL
Sponsor delivery
Every contracted deliverable fulfilled.
TECHNOLOGY
Technical reliability
No critical technical failures.
Delivery & implementation
Built to run reliably at university scale
The programme is designed to run consistently on any campus, whatever the local resourcing. Squid supplies the full teaching materials, the case studies, the learning platform, and the assessment instruments.
The delivery model
How each session runs
Each module's expert content is delivered by a recorded industry practitioner, then localised and reinforced by a trained local lecturer in the room.
- Students work in teams of three to five
- One lecturer per maximum 30 students
- Scales to larger cohorts through parallel sections
- No prerequisites; open to students from any faculty
Core and enrichment
What makes it licensable anywhere
The entire taught programme runs from supplied materials with no local industry access required. Optional real-world components can be layered on where a partner's setup allows.
- Industry brief set by a real esports company
- Live-event site visit to a professional tournament
- Embedded guest lecturers in the commercial and media phases
Assessed on produced work, not exams
Every course is graded entirely on coursework, with no final exams. The Foundation's weighting is shown here; the Specialisation and Tournament each carry their own.
10%
Attendance and participation
15%
Knowledge checks
30%
Workshop outputs
25%
Reflections
20%
Capstone playbook
Outcomes & why it matters
Proven with students, certified by pedagogy experts
Assumption University in Bangkok is one of the universities we work with, and the one where we ran a full case study across a live cohort. The results below are from that study.
Case study
Assumption University, Bangkok
Squid delivered the Business of Esports as a credit-bearing elective at Assumption University. It drew students from across the institution and returned strong results on both quality and reach.
85
students enrolled
6
faculties represented
~89%
from outside the host faculty
4.4/5
student quality rating
95.5%
would recommend it
92%
EAF pedagogy score
On completion, the teaching team publicly endorsed the course and the partnership. Curriculum design independently certified by Education Alliance Finland.
Why universities choose it
Cross-faculty pull
In our case study, roughly 89% of students came from outside the host faculty. It fills seats from across the institution.
Independently certified
A 92% pedagogy score from Education Alliance Finland, certifying the quality of the curriculum design itself.
A growing field
Southeast Asia esports revenue grew 20.8% a year from 2019 to 2024 (Newzoo), a market students want to enter.
Graduate portfolios
Students leave with a body of professional work across every function of running a real event, not just a transcript line.
Internasyonal na Akreditado
Our curriculum has been certified by Education Alliance Finland — a globally respected authority in learning quality — with an Excellent rating. Independently validated teaching quality for confident institutional adoption.
92%
Score sa Pedagogy
4.2 / 5
Learning Engagement
Research-Based
Educational Psychology Standards
BOE
CEFR Aligned
Mga Pamantayan sa Wika at Pagiging Naa-access
BOE, Business Of Esports
Lahat ng program materials ay isinulat ayon sa tinukoy na English language standards, na nakatugma sa audience at antas ng program, upang manatiling naa-access ang pagkatuto at kumpiyansa at konsistent ang pagtuturo.
CEFR B1-B2
Para sa Estudyante
eCourse materials, Student Learning Guides, at in-class resources
CEFR B2-C1
Para sa Guro
Lecturer Delivery Guides, Lesson Plans, at delivery notes
Nalalapat ang mga pamantayang ito sa lahat ng modules at phases sa loob ng BOE degree pathway, mula Summer Elective hanggang Terms 1 to 3.
Access & Next Steps
Universities may access the Business of Esports through authorised Squid Academy partners or directly from Squid Academy, depending on regional availability.
Sa pamamagitan ng mga awtorisadong partner ng Squid Academy
Sa iyong rehiyon
Direkta mula sa Squid Academy
Kung walang lokal na partner
Commercial models and delivery structures vary by region and institutional context. All implementations provide access to Squid Academy's full teaching ecosystem, including curriculum materials, delivery tools, and platform support.
Bring the Business of Esports to your university
Book a walkthrough of the curriculum and the platform, and see the full results.