Blizzard announced Monday that Heroes of the Dorm, the aptly named college Heroes of the Storm Championship was coming back in partnership with Tespa in 2018. It will be available to every college in the country and they will be broadcasting matches weekly thanks to a new partnership with Raycom Sports on twitch and mlg.
It has been announced that there will be more than $500,000 of scholarships available and other prizes according to Blizzard’s official release. There will be regional play that leads into a 64-team bracket, which sounds similar to March Madness. These 64 teams will be seeded based on their regional records.
Blizzard has been making many esports moves in the last few years. With so much attention going over to Overwatch league, which is heading into its third week. This announcement for Heroes of the Dorm may come as a surprise to some. Blizzard and Tespa agreed to work together as Tespa already had a good foundation for college esports.
Heroes of the Storm has always been lurking on the fringes with viewership numbers putting them somewhere around 12th on Twitch.tv according to sullygnome.com.
In the past, Blizzard has seen promise for Heroes of the Dorm as it was on ESPN and it was actually controversial. People may remember the Colin Cowherd rant against esports when this was happening.
Some believe this was one of the last straws that broke the camel’s back for Cowherd as he left ESPN just a few weeks later.
Since then, Heroes of the Storm has taken a back seat to Overwatch and Hearthstone in viewers and seemingly overall until this announcement. It will be interesting to see if Blizzard leads the charge or if Tespa takes control. With college esports on the rise it is also possible that the viewership numbers go up. Also with the huge amount of scholarship money being offered one can imagine that the playerbase will also increase.
For anyone looking to sign up can at www.heroesofthedorm.com
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