The National University Esports League (NUEL) LoL champions, Grey Warwick, will be representing the UK in the University Esports Masters (UEM).
This is a Europe-wide university League of Legends tournament running this weekend from June 3rd to 4th. It consists of the collegiate champions of France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK.
Maynooth University will be representing Ireland.
The two winning teams from the University Esports Masters will represent Europe in the 2017 LoL International College Cup, a tournament hosted by Riot Games parent company Tencent.
The College Cup will take place in China this July – it has a €13,000 prize pool. There will be 12 teams (two from Europe, two from NA, two from South East Asia, two from China, and one from Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The two winners of the College Cup will will travel to Taipei in early August to play in the 29th Summer Universiade, a multi-sport university competition.
Last year, UK’s Aston Aunties made it to the University Esports Masters final but lost out to Portugal.
Warwick beat previous NUEL Live holders Aston 3-0 in the 2017 finals earlier this year, qualifying Warwick for the European university tournament this time round.
Warwick’s roster has changed slightly for the qualifiers. Top-laner Kerberos told Esports News UK their mid-laner iivan leung can’t play, so xer gath is playing mid instead.
The roster is as follows:
- kerber0s – top
- Vidoktor – jungle
- xer gath – mid
- RedamnTion – ADC
- princephilip – support
‘A great opportunity’ – UEM co-founder
Simone Gambardella, co-founder of the University Esports Series, told Esports News UK: “University Esports Masters was founded last year when five European collegiate organizations (from France, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal and Spain) created the first European Tournament which joined the best national team from each country.
“This year we are very excited for this great opportunity that Tencent gives us with the Invitational Collegiate Cup.”
“It involved 200+ universities, 8,000+ student players, 44,000+ unique livestream viewers and 125,000+ Twitch livestream views. This project attracted a lot of attention and we collaborated with Twitch for a special student program to bring collegiate esports to a high level.
“This year we are very excited for this great opportunity that Tencent gives us with the Invitational Collegiate Cup, a LoL tournament that involves all the collegiate community from all over the world!
“The winning teams in China also will travel to Taipei in early August to play a match at the Summer Universiade and this is amazing! This year new organisations join the project, from Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, and even more requests are arriving!”
Teams and format
- France: Qbyte – Student Gaming Network
- Germany: TDR TUHH GamING – University Esport Germany
- UK: Grey Warwick – National University Esports League
- Ireland: Maynooth University – Irish Collegiate Esports
- Italy: PoliTo Red Team (“Politecnico di Torino”) – University Esports Series
- Netherlands: Team Netherlands (TBD) – Dutch College League
- Portugal: FEUP – Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto – E-University League
- Spain: Thunders UVIGO – OGSeries University
Teams will face each other in a best-of-one single round robin format from 2pm BST on Saturday June 3rd.
The top team from each group will then face the runner-up from the other group, in a best-of-three. These two games will take place on Sunday June 4th at 5pm and 8.30pm BST.
You can watch it all live on the UEM Twitch channel.
Credit: This has all been detailed on the EU League of Legends website by Riot Bolton, aka John King, English community specialist at Riot Games.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
