As professional video game competitions — e-sports — have grown in popularity in North America, they've sold out arenas, attracted high-profile sponsors and even appeared on sports networks like ESPN.

This weekend in Toronto, college and university students will compete for $100,000 US in scholarships in the finals of the Collegiate Starleague (CSL) circuit, a league not unlike the NCAA for college sports.

Canadian teams from the University of Toronto, University of British Columbia (UBC) Simon Fraser and more will join American teams in some of the top competitive video games: League of Legends (LoL), Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) 2, Starcraft 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

The University of British Columbia's League of Legends team is one of the most successful college and university-level e-sports teams in North America. (UBC e-sports/Facebook)

The CSL was founded in 2009 by Mona Zhang as a Princeton freshman. It was subsequently purchased by WorldGaming, which Cineplex acquired in 2015 for $10 million with a promise to invest $5 million more in the venture.

Cineplex has held multiple e-sports events in Canada over the past couple of years, but this will be the first major showcase for the CSL north of the border. Last year's finals were held as part of a larger event called Dreamhack in Austin, Texas.

Players must maintain good grades

Collegiate Starleague CEO and general manager Wim Stocks hopes organizations like his will fill in the amateur or developmental side of e-sports, like a video game equivalent of the NCAA.

But he also points out that, unlike college football or basketball, the lines between pro and amateur e-sports is less clear.

"There's a real softness and no real definition in the difference between an amateur and a pro player," he told CBC News. "There's nothing that would prohibit someone from one weekend playing for the Robert Morris University team but then the next weekend flying out to an event and participating in a pro event."

Students compete in an event as part of the Collegiate Starleague, a college-level e-sports league owned by Cineplex. (Collegiate Starleague)

The CSL does set some hard limits: all teams involved in the league have to be associated with post-secondary school, and all team members must be currently enrolled students with at least a 2.5 grade point average.

"So they can't just be sitting on their couch and not attending class. If their grades drop, they can't play in the league," Stocks said.

Varsity e-sports

College e-sports have slowly grown in prominence in the U.S., with some schools adopting video games into their varsity sports programs.

Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh was the first to introduce such a program in 2014. Since then, more than 30 other schools have started similar programs.

Even the Big Ten, one of the U.S.'s oldest collegiate athletic commissions, recently announced a League of Legends tournament, with the winning team advancing in the 2017 Campus Series, organized by LoL's publishing studio Riot Games.

Canadian schools have been comparatively slower to embrace e-sports as a full-blown extracurricular activity instead of a hobby.

In March, St. Clair College in Windsor, Ont., and Lambton College in Sarnia, Ont., announced formalized e-sports programs. Most other Canadian college teams operate as clubs instead, with little to no funding or co-ordination with their academic institutions.

Canadian teams dominate

That hasn't stopped Canadian teams from dominating the North American competitive circuit, however.

UBC's League of Legends team won first place at the University League of Legends (uLoL) Campus Series in 2016, taking home $180,000 US in scholarships.

The team's success has garnered sponsorships from computer hardware companies like Steelseries and ASUS.

UBC isn't the only team to make it out of these events with substantial paydays: Simon Fraser's LoL team took home $32,000 in scholarships before falling to UBC in the same year. The matches that resulted in their rivalry were so exciting, both schools' e-sports clubs were profiled in a video by uLoL.

Events like the CSL finals promise cheering crowds and scholarships for the winners. But are they also a way to play in the professional leagues?

A handful of Canadian players have been recruited by major teams after impressing at the college level. UBC alum Bob Qin now plays for eUnited, and Team SoloMid's Vincent (Biofrost) Wang began his career at U of T.

But they are exceptions. Players who plan on finishing their degrees may find themselves too old to try to make the ranks of professional teams.

"The peak age for gaming is, like, 18 to 22. So these players are already past their prime when playing on these teams," says Gabe Johnstone, manager for UBC's League of Legends team.

Most approach their college e-sports career as a fun and productive way to spend their hours outside of class, with the added bonus of travel, making friends and money to cover tuition costs.

'We're trying to legitimize e-sports'

In the lead-up to major tournaments, Johnstone's team trains together up to 30 hours a week to hone their strategies and reaction times on the mouse and keyboard.

Top gamers earn millions and events pack stadiums much like pro-sports, CBC's Deana Sumanac-Johnson reports 2:22

"We're trying to legitimize e-sports, especially on the U of T campus. Gaming has been stigmatized by a lot of the higher authorities," says Reiyyan Nizami, co-founder of U of T's e-sports club.

"Our aim was to create an environment where people could accept gamers and even cheer them on, and support them as part of the community, as opposed to looking at us as some kids living in our parents' basements."

Efforts to convince people that gaming can be as legitimate as traditional sports continues in the boardroom as much as the dorm room.

"I'm sure they're not all quite grasping it — the equivalence of an e-sports varsity program to that of football or basketball or baseball or whatever," Stocks says of academic institutions used to dealing with traditional sports.

"Yet these players are, in every regard, athletes. There's a very heavy strategic element that's no different from a football or basketball team. There's reflexes and mental and visual acuity [required] that other athletes have."