Riot Games has appointed the six members of the advisory committee of the new Riot Scholastic Association of America (RSAA), its autonomous division to manage the esports of League of Legends
The members of the advisory committee are: Big Ten Network VP / Marketing Erin Harvego; Senior Vice President for the Mountain West Conference / Government & Legal Affairs Carolayne Henry; Intersport Executive / Export Director Kurt Melcher, who also leads export sports at Robert Morris University; Director UC-Irvine / Esports Mark Deppe; Director of the University of Utah / Export Operations A.J. Dimick; and Professor T.L of MIT. Taylor, who is also director of research for the AnyKey diversity advocacy group.
The RSAA will have an open mandate to pursue initiatives that will help establish the League of Legends as a long-term presence on US campuses, instead of relying on probably short-lived student clubs.
Michael Sherman, head of the college, and Matt Birris, head of school sports, will continue to lead the college and high school operating teams respectively. Both will continue to report to the North American editorial director Chris Wyatt.
The creation of the RSAA, reported for the first time by the Sports Business Daily on May 17, comes shortly after the NCAA Board of Governors has decided not to pursue its export plan.
However, Sherman said, this was not a response to the NCAA’s decision. Riot always wanted to create an entity to control its own game, and if the NCAA had pursued sports, it would have pushed it to make the RSAA comparable to the specific NCAA sports committees
The main priorities of the RSAA, said Sherman, are to better develop the Riot brand in the world of colleges and to improve communications with schools that put in place export teams or could be interested in joining. “We want to have a better level of communication that focuses on one-to-many communications with schools,” said Sherman. “It was a fight with Riot in the current capacity.”
The advisory will hold its first meeting on Thursday, when the championships of the University League will begin.
