How I helped deliver a state-of-the-art e-sports facility

E-sports is big business these days. It’s not just fans of sports like football, golf, tennis and Formula 1 who want live action streamed from the farthest reaches of the globe direct to their homes. Millions of dedicated armchair supporters are now hooked on the world of competitive video gaming, too. 

In fact, many of the latest live broadcast innovations that improve the experience for fans of more traditional sports were first developed for games played with pixels, not on pitches.

Press ‘start’ to begin

In 2018, the University of Staffordshire became the first UK university to launch a dedicated e-sports degree. But it soon became clear that, in order to offer students the best employment opportunities – and to win business from industry partners – its e-sports facilities had to be able to compete with those of professional broadcasters. 

Richard Mortimer CMgr MCMI led the technical team behind the project to revamp the university’s offering. He knew it would require a fresh approach: giving its external technology partner licence to shape the building design from the start. This meant getting buy-in from internal stakeholders, who were understandably shy of taking risks. 

• “Doing the degree apprenticeship was probably the best decision I could have made”

“Big organisations like universities can be very siloed,” says Richard. “Somebody within our estates department would be the one to take the fall for any failure. We had to convince our colleagues there to flip some ingrained preconceptions on their head.”

The good news for Richard was that he had previously completed a Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship (CMDA), with a BA in professional management, as part of his role at the university.  

“I don’t think my input on that project would have been successful were it not for the capacity to reflect back on the CMDA and put my learnings into practice,” he says.

For example, thanks to a module on project management, Richard understood the risks involved in the facility upgrade and was able to speak to his peers using language they could understand and respond well to. 

“We work with digital services departments who are clued up on agile project management,” he says. “I had an understanding of that and could challenge some of those understandings in this unique scenario from a position of knowledge and sympathy. Without that alignment with what good project management looks like, it would have been difficult.”