Who are we?

The University of Manchester e-Sports Society is an organisation run by University of Manchester students. Our primary aim is to develop an active e-Sports Community at the University of Manchester. We want to use the opportunity presented by our position as society leaders to help build the UK e-Sports scene so that it will be as vibrant as the rest of Europe’s. In that spirit, we are proud to present the King of the North Gaming Event: a combined tournament and culminating live event, attendance to which is open to anyone.

The King of the North

The centrepieces of the event are tournaments in Starcraft 2, League of Legends and DotA 2. The participants in these tournaments will be UK university students from the north of England and Wales. Both the qualifiers (on Saturdays 15th and 22nd of February) and the live final event will be streamed to online viewers. The live finals will be played on high-end gaming computers supplied to us by one of our sponsors Fraggers Gaming Café. The live event is more than just a tournament however. Taking place in the University of Manchester’s Student’s Union, Academy 2, on Wednesday 19th March 2014, the event aims to provide an awesome day of gaming of all kinds to attendees.

Activities include:

Sponsor Stalls - our sponsors, including MSi Notebooks UK and CoolerMaster CMStorm will have stalls at the event where attendees can come and check out their high-end gear.

Console Gaming - The University of Manchester’s Gaming Society will be providing consoles for attendees to play and compete on throughout the day.

Tabletop Gaming - The local branch of Games Workshop will be represented, catering to all your tabletop needs.

Cosplay Competition - We invite all attendees to show off their best cosplay.

The Manchester Comic Book Collective, who are responsible for all our amazing artwork for the event, will be present as well, so be sure to come check out their work!

There will also be well-priced food and drink in the venue, all day long, including access to the student bar downstairs.

More will be announced in the weeks running up to the event.

But perhaps the best thing about the live event is the ticket price: just £2 for the whole day when pre-purchased online.

Remember, attendance to final event is open to anyone!

Running Order for the Day

10:00am - Doors Open

10:30am - Starcraft 2 Finals

12:30pm - DotA 2 Finals

4:30pm - LoL Finals

10:00pm Doors Close

Format for the Tournament

The centrepiece of the event is the finals of our eSports tournament. The tournament is capped at 32 teams, and is open to universities PREFERABLY in the north-west, with a cap of two teams per university. The reason for this is that we wanted to ensure that whoever qualifies for the finals will be able to attend on the day. The teams will play in online qualifiers in the weeks running up to event (signups are OPEN NOW, head over to our website www.uomesports.com), so that we can determine who the invitees to the final event will be.

On the day itself, the finalists from each qualifier (information on which is available through the National University Esports League's website) will be invited to play at the King of the North offline event.

Why Kickstarter?

We know that £250 is not enough to fund an event of this size: we’re not asking you to fund it. We want to give you guys the opportunity to help make our event even better; to make it more prestigious; to make it more professional; to make the viewing and attending experience the best that it can be. Our aim, above all, is to grow and encourage the eSports community in the United Kingdom. The best way to do this is to produce the absolute best event we can. We want to ensure that we can put on a day that will blow people’s minds. That’s the reason we've come to Kickstarter - we believe the eSports community will want to help us create the amazing event we envisage. We want to give you guys the chance to get involved by supporting us.

We are a non-profit organisation, so any money donated to this kickstarter will be spent on this event alone, we will keep none of it. We hope that, if we work together to start a new wave of community-driven eSports events like this one, we can continue to push the phenomenon that we have been living as fans and viewers for the past few years. We aren’t a million-dollar business, but we don’t need to be and we don’t want to be. We are the viewers, the chatters, the forum-posters, the fist-pumpers, the long-sufferers, we are the players, and this is the event we want to make.

How we will spend the Kickstarter money?

The money raised from the kickstarter will be used in the following ways:

1. Increasing the prize pool - We always wanted the prize pool to consist of both gear from our sponsors and a cash prize. The bigger the prize pool, the more exciting the event. We want to make this event as exciting as possible.

2. Increasing the technical budget - We believe we can already provide a great viewing experience for both online and live viewers. However, with more funding we can increase the quality of the equipment we use and pay for more tech support for a smoother operation on the day.

3. Funding finalists travel - We know students are tight for money, and so we would like to subsidise travel to the event for finalists.

Rewards

We have outlined a series of rewards to thank you for supporting the event. Any award over £5 will receive a ticket for the event. Even if you cannot attend the event we would still appreciate your support. All rewards include the awards from lower tiers too.

These rewards are Kickstarter exclusives so get them while you can!

£1 - Your name or username will appear on our stream during our live event to thank you.

£5 - We’ll also guarantee you a ticket to the final live event on Wednesday 19th March.

£15 - Your choice of one of three epic posters, in the theme of the artwork styled by our incredibly talented art team

£30 - We’ll send you a themed KotN t-shirt, mock-ups of which can be previewed below.

£50 - We’ll give you the VIP Pass, which gives you fast entry to the offline event and reserved seats in the front row for the finals!

£200 - In order to add to your glory, we’ll accompany all previous rewards with a crown and a robe. To suit your kingly or queenly status the staff will even address you for the whole day with a title of your choosing (only one available).

£1000 If anyone was generous enough to donate this much money, as a committee we’d write, record and perform a song dedicated to their honour, glory and generousness. (Genuinely, we will actually do this and again, only one available).

info@uomesports.com

http://www.uomesports.com

https://www.facebook.com/KotN2014