A growing craze

Getting to this point hasn’t been easy. State athletic associations must approve esports before schools in the state can adopt it. Twenty-three have so far, and many of them have needed convincing from PlayVS, which pitches them on benefits like getting more kids involved after school. Even after getting states on board, PlayVS must engage with individual schools that are considering signing up and walk them through the onboarding process, which often involves cutting through several layers of bureaucracy.

For Lee James, a social studies teacher and gaming enthusiast in Washington, D.C., pitching his school on the idea of forming a team meant getting approval from the athletic director, vice-principal, and principal. “There was a lot of convincing people who didn’t know esports was a thing that it was, in fact, a thing,” says James. Since then, the team has grown to 50 students. After school administrators witnessed the teamwork and communication involved, the school converted an old computer lab into a dedicated esports room.

“I used to be a lawyer, but there’s only so much my words can do,” says James. “Once people see this in action and talk to students about it, then they know it’s real.”

At the college level, PlayVS has signed up teams at Division I sports powerhouses like Ohio State, Penn State, and Texas A&M. In 2020, Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina launched several teams and became the first historically Black university to offer an esports management curriculum. The minor includes courses on gaming-related technology, business trends, and project management. BerNadette Lawson-Williams, a sports management professor and advisor to the program, views it as helping prepare students for a booming video game industry that made $67 billion in revenues in the U.S. last year.

Aiming high

Managing relationships with nearly 10,000 schools is a tall order for the 90-employee PlayVS. The startup relies on customer relationship management software to handle its relationships and uses proprietary software to partially automate common issues like rescheduling canceled matches. The company’s growing community and support teams onboard schools and help them deal with technological and administrative issues. Staffers get assigned to particular geographic regions so they develop familiarity with the coaches.

“We take a very personal approach to managing those relationships,” says Parnell. “I can’t truthfully say that we have all the answers or that we’ve done the greatest job managing every single relationship. But we obsess over the problems they share with us and we try really hard to fix them.”

PlayVS also allows youths in states that haven’t yet approved of varsity high school esports to form their own player-led teams and compete on a separate product that includes the popular games Fortnite and Overwatch. The startup exists in a space also occupied by High School Esports League and Super League, which organize amateur esports matches and make money through fees or sponsorships, as well as the nonprofit North American Scholastic Esports Federation. But PlayVS’s exclusive deal with the NFHS gives it credibility and a layer of protection from competitors in the high school space.

In June, the startup will hold the inaugural PlayVS Cup, a platform-wide tournament that will crown a single champion. Parnell think it’s a glimpse into a future in which PlayVS, which expanded into Canada last year, becomes the dominant platform in the global amateur esports space.