Everything began calmly enough on that Friday night in December.
Five North Carolina teens had gathered online from their homes in Raleigh for the big showdown. Ranging in age from 13 to 16, the boys powered up their gaming PCs and donned their headsets, eager to take on five members of an esports team from a nearby college – a clash of boys versus men in the world of competitive gaming.
Their virtual playing field was Valorant, a first-person shooter game set in the year 2050.
From the first minutes of the scrimmage, it was clear the Carolina boys excelled at Valorant tactics and cherished sportsmanship, byproducts of their time in XP League, North America’s largest youth esports organization. Wearing their Triangle Minotaur team jerseys, the teens’ first move was to type a respectful message into the game chat: “glhf,” or “good luck, have fun.”
The college team, meanwhile, used voice chat to trash-talk the teens, who ignored the barbs and dominated the action. Playing from their campus and falling behind, the college teammates started mocking one another. Moments later, the Triangle Minotaur took the opening game, causing one of the college players to smash his computer monitor and rage quit.
“It was a great, teachable moment for my kids,” says Jay Melamed, XP League’s co-founder and CEO. He also helps coach the Triangle Minotaur, one of hundreds of XP League teams across the U.S. and Canada. Spanning elementary, middle and high school students, teams compete in Fortnite, Overwatch 2 and other online video games.
The organization bills itself as “the Little League of esports.” But its true mission is to build character and reinforce positive behaviors – traits that can mold college candidates, future leaders and better people, Melamed says. That vision, he believes, also may repair the sometimes-toxic culture of competitive gaming.
“That night, the conversation I had with my team was: ‘This is why colleges are going to go crazy for you because you know how to communicate and work as a team,’” Melamed recalled.
Since its 2020 launch in Raleigh, XP League has awarded 50 franchises with dozens more coming soon, each coordinating its own cluster of local teams. The total initial investment for franchisees to own their own mobile XP League franchise ranges from $58,200 to $152,760. The monthly cost for players ranges from $120 to $150. Owners receive a steady flow of resources from league headquarters, including coach and player training, marketing plans, branded gear, scheduling assistance and game-day support.
To scale and sustain its franchise network, XP League relies on an array of Microsoft technologies, such as SharePoint, a web-based collaboration platform that the organization’s staff and franchise owners use to communicate and share files, Melamed says.