Leading esports and gaming sabermetrics platform GYO Score has developed a new study correlating esports athletes and their interested college majors and collegiate preferences.
The report conducted on the GYO Score platform finds astounding results and shows 52.6% of esports athletes at the high school and collegiate levels are interested in pursuing a college major in the “Sciences” category (traditional STEM fields). The category includes computer science, nursing, engineering, applied sciences, etc.
“There has always been this assumption and stereotype by the esports community at large that if you’re into gaming and esports, you’re probably also into computers, science, and math,” said Shawn Smith, CEO of Harena Data and chief architect of the data survey. “After nearly a year of recruiting players interested in pursuing esports scholarships, our data lays the foundation for these assumptions at an even greater rate than we had expected.”
Additionally, nearly 24.4% of esports athletes are interested in pursuing a college degree in “Arts” or “Business & Finance”. The statistic will surprise many as traditional athletes such as football, basketball, baseball, and hockey have historically pursued these two categories for their college majors in much greater numbers. For comparison, a 2016 Bleacher Report study shows a much higher percentage of college football athletes gravitate towards business and social sciences (55%+) than STEM-related majors, with only 9% of athletes falling into the “Arts and Sciences” category of the study.
The GYO Score report found that arts (design, graphic design, fashion, acting, and others) account for 13.3% while business & finance (economics, accounting, finance, and others) account for 11.1% of surveyed respondents.
With the rise of gaming, 13.2% of surveyed athletes would be interested in a major related to gaming and esports. Lastly, 5.3% of respondents do not know what they want to pursue and 4.4% have been categorized as “Other”.
The original study findings can be found published here on GYO Score’s blog.
