Sam Schelfhout, an assistant professor of sport management and director of Club Esports at Sacred Heart University, specializes in the intersection of competitive gaming, organizational strategy and student development.
His work focuses on esports program leadership, industry partnerships and preparing students for emerging careers in digital and traditional sports environments.
To learn more about his perspective, we reached out to Professor Schelfhout for the following interview.
Question: At what age, and how, did you begin interacting with esports?
Answer: I first learned about esports during my undergraduate years at the University of Portland. In 2013, I had a few roommates who played Dota 2 and League of Legends, but I never expressed interest in either of those (or esports in general) at the time. I was the type of person who skeptically opined, “Why would anyone want to watch video games when they can just play them?” This shortsighted view of esports was flipped when, during my graduate education in Austin, Texas, in 2016, I discovered Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone at the SXSW Gaming Expo. At that first moment when I watched the gameplay, I remember thinking to myself, “I want to be the best at this game.” Over the next few years, I would compete in national and international qualifying events and through Tespa as a member of the University of Texas at Austin’s gaming club. I earned a little bit of money playing Hearthstone, but never enough to play as much as I wanted to. From there, I slowly incorporated esports into my existing research interests (I was doing my master’s and then Ph.D. in sport studies at the time) and have continued to explore different ways of writing, learning about, and researching esports and video games, most commonly through a sociocultural and historical lens.
Q: Tell us about your role in leading the esports club at SHU?
A: I currently serve as the director for Sacred Heart Club Esports. Essentially, I oversee all aspects of the program’s operations, including recruiting and retaining team members, coordinating competitions and tournaments, and serving as the liaison with our leagues. We primarily compete in two leagues: ECAC Esports and the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. We just opened our Esports Lab on our main campus earlier this year, and we’ve also hosted the Connecticut Esports Showcase every April since 2021, which invites the top collegiate programs across the state to compete in several titles.
Q: What do you enjoy most about it?
A: My primary role is as an assistant professor for the Jack Welch College of Business and Technology at Sacred Heart University; however, the role of Director of Club Esports has almost felt like a full-time position in itself! We’ve done a lot of work trying to take the club to new heights, and there are many fun challenges that keep the role fresh and exciting. Hosting tournaments, including the Connecticut Esports Showcase, is both a thrill and a challenge. However, when executed well, these are incredibly rewarding experiences for both me and our club members.
Additionally, what keeps me coming back and doing my best work is the people I work with. Having mutual understanding and respect for all of our teams is a big difference-maker. We have a lot of club members who are passionate about esports and video games, and those who can help chart a positive course to improve the club’s atmosphere are those I am very grateful for.
Q: Describe the courses on esports that you currently teach?
A: Our Academic Esports program is a collaboration between the Sport Management program in the College of Business and Technology and the Sport Communications and Media program in the College of Arts & Sciences. I regularly teach two courses in our Esports minor at Sacred Heart University: ESP 201 (Foundations in Esports) and ESP 401 (Capstone in Esports). Our Foundations in Esports course is essentially an “introduction” to the esports industry, and we focus on four distinct modules: an introduction to the video game industry and esports ecosystem, esports culture & communities, esports media and content, and the business of esports. Our capstone (ESP 401) requires students to synthesize and apply knowledge from their business and media studies by contributing to the planning, production, and promotion of the Connecticut Esports Showcase, our on-campus esports tournament. Students select a specific aspect of the event to focus on throughout the semester, which can include (but is not limited to) marketing, social media, technology, outreach, and broadcasting. I also teach a Contemporary Issues in Esports course that is offered less frequently than the two listed above – this class focuses more on current events in the esports industry and how students can critically analyze trends, controversies, and emerging challenges facing numerous stakeholders in the industry.
For all of these courses, I incorporate guest speakers from across the industry and provide experiential opportunities that immerse students in both the video game and esports industries. We’re fortunate to have excellent on-campus resources that offer students multiple perspectives on how to get involved. In addition to our new esports lab, we also have the NeXReality Lab, which houses our virtual, augmented, and extended reality (VR/AR/XR) technologies and research. Our Sports Communication & Media (SCM) program also supports students with a plethora of resources, including broadcast studios, control rooms, media labs, podcast suites, and soundstages, that help them understand the media production side of esports.
Q: What interests you about the legal side of the business?
A: The legal side of esports is something that we regularly discuss in my courses. As the world continues to become increasingly globalized, the spread of esports gives rise to issues that must be addressed on a global scale, and much of this is determined by how esports are (or are not) governed internationally. Much of my graduate research focused on the governance of international sporting bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee, so examples like these provide good comparisons for esports governing bodies. This leads to lots of interesting discussions about the implications of the strengths and weaknesses of international governance, including (but not limited to) limiting corruption and deviance, issuance of visas, and how governance can provide a sense of legitimacy for the growth and stability of esports in countries.
Another area I find interesting is the issue of organizational misconduct and the lack of legal protection for players. This partly stems from my experience playing Hearthstone – it was very common for players to be awarded prize money only to never receive it or have it sent well past the competition date. This stems from a lack of governance as well – if there is no one to appeal to, there is no one to punish guilty parties and players; as a result, they are not protected. It is also increasingly common to see underage esports professionals enter the scene and sign predatory contracts simply because they lack the legal knowledge to fairly represent themselves. Many of my sport management students have aspirations to become sports agents or legal representatives for professional athletes, and I like to show them this side of the industry and its need for more legal actors that can educate players and advocate for them.
Q: What trends are you going to be tracking in 2026?
A: The esports industry is still navigating a few harsh realities following the height of the esports winter we saw throughout 2024 – viewership of esports competitions remains very high, especially among young people, so I’m very interested to see how organizations and titles will approach revenue generation in 2026. It turns out that sponsorship revenue, prize pools, and league structures are not enough to keep organizations afloat, so it will be very interesting to see which strategies shine moving forward. Esports and traditional sports have borrowed from one another over the past decade, so I wonder if this relationship becomes more symbiotic or if esports will break away to experiment with its own monetization strategies.
As gambling faces multiple reckonings in traditional sports, I am interested to see what the future of esports gambling holds. Admittedly, this isn’t a primary area of interest for me (I am one of the most risk-averse people you will ever meet!), but it is an area I frequently hear about from colleagues and students. Will esports fill the void for disillusioned sports bettors? Will it suffer the same misfortunes that we are seeing in traditional sports? There is a lot to watch here – I have been a fan of Cody Luongo’s Sharpr newsletter, which frequently covers this realm – perhaps it will be something I pay more attention to in 2026!
Selfishly, I’m also very interested in the digital card game genre and what will emerge in 2026. I quit Hearthstone a few years ago and have been searching for the next title to knock my socks off. I’m dabbling in Magic: The Gathering Arena, The Bazaar, and Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, but none of them have hit the same as Hearthstone once did. I think there’s potential for the rise of blockchain card games, in which cards are tokenized as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), but I have yet to see this concept reach the mainstream. If anyone has any recommendations for me in this area, let me know!
