University of Manchester Esports Society announces King of the North VI

1. The University of Manchester (UoM) Esports Society, in partnership with the University of Salford, have announced details of the sixth iteration of King of the North, the UK’s largest student-run gaming festival.

The event is set to host tournament finals for four games, and will see the top student-lead university teams compete for the title of King of the North, as well as gaming hardware and a cash prize of at least £100 per player.

Two tournaments will be run by the University of Manchester Esports Society: the League of Legends tournament and the Overwatch tournament. The event will also host the finals of the NUEL’s CSGO University Championships and the University Siege League’s (USL) Rainbow 6: Siege tournament finals.

All live finals will be played on a staging area within the University of Salford’s MediaCityUK (MCUK) building, featuring top up-and-coming casting, observing and production talent.

The UoM Esports Society adopts Twitch Student’s UK programme. The King of the North live finals will be streamed via the society’s Twitch account at twitch.tv/uomesports, bar the NUEL’s CSGO University Championship finals.

UoM Esports Society president Felix Dayan commented: “It will be an amazing event this year. We’ve been a lot more ambitious than before and we hope it will really show. I expect we’ll be seeing an even greater turnout than we have in the past, and I’m confident that the finals will be just as thrilling and entertaining as they always have. The best of the best university teams will be battling it out, and those students are the players that go on to do big things in the esports community as a whole.”

Daniel Shields, the production lead for the event, added: “This year we’re really trying to step up production from last year. We’re hosting the CSGO University Championship Finals and USL’s Rainbow Six: Siege Finals, so obviously quality of broadcast will be key to making these partnerships successful.”

The event has its own dedicated website at uomesports.co.uk, where teams can sign-up to play in the qualifiers of the tournaments and also watch the stream during the events and qualifiers. You can also get up-to-date news about the event by joining the dedicated Discord server at uomesports.co.uk/discord.

Tickets bought on the door will be £4, while tickets bought in advance cost £3. While only university students are permitted to play in the tournament, the event is open to all ages, and welcomes large groups coming to support their local teams, with a discount for bookings of 10 at a time.

This announcement follows on from the success of the Manchester Invitational, a derby between the UoM and UoS esports teams hosted by the University of Salford Esports Society. The UoM teams won four out of the five games played at the event.

Winners from the last King of the North event included teams from the universities of Portsmouth, Birmingham and Warwick.