Don’t count Northeastern Athletic Director Jeff Konya among the skeptics of esports being a quick trend that vanishes.

Konya is convinced esports are an integral part of the future, so much so that Northeastern is becoming the first Division 1 institution in New England to add esports as a varsity program.

“I always felt good about this platform even back when we launched an aggressive esports operation in 2018,” Konya said. “(It) was always in the back of my mind as a possibility. It’s growing in interest with society and growing in interest at Northeastern and now is just the right time to make it happen.”

Northeastern, which will have four teams playing in Overwatch, League of Legends, Rocket League and Hearthstone when it begins varsity competition in the fall of 2020, had success at the club level before elevating the status of the program.

In 2017, the Huskies club team claimed the Rocket League national championship, followed by a top-four finish in the collegiate Rocket League Eastern Division in 2018.

The Huskies continued to be a top-tier team in the region this academic year with 150 members at the club level, over 600 participants involved in the student organization and 1,400 students who showed interest in esports.

Northeastern, which has a dedicated facility on campus for its gamers with state-of-the-art equipment, looks to have 20 to 35 players in the inaugural varsity program along with adding coaching and administrative roles to the team while keeping open opportunities at the club and recreational levels to satisfy the heightened interest from students.

“It’s really shell-shocked me how much this industry has grown and how much it really does appeal to student interests and how much involvement there really is in the demographics of high school and college-aged students,” said Nick Avery, Northeastern’s associate director of club sports and esports. “It’s been quite a ride watching the development of this program.”

There’s no denying the immense popularity of the competitive gaming industry, which boasts a billion-dollar market and had a larger viewing audience for the League of Legends World Championship final than the Super Bowl in 2018. Even New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is involved in the industry as he owns the Boston Uprising, a professional Overwatch esports team founded in 2017.

Avery, who wrestled at Indiana, believes esports can have the same impact on student-athletes as traditional sports.

“Everything else you normally would and could learn in a typical athletic space, but now we can do it remotely and virtually through esports,” Avery said. “There’s so many similarities that people wouldn’t see off the offset.”

Konya said 80 to 90 percent of incoming students have been exposed to esports before stepping foot on a college campus and that will only help the industry continue to ascend.

The gaming boom can also be seen in the National Association of Collegiate Esports, which began in 2016 with only seven member schools and has blossomed with over 170 colleges and universities supporting varsity programs.

Northeastern wants to be at the forefront of esports. Konya feels NU can support a flourishing program that can expand and contend nationally, while one day possibly holding tournaments at Matthews Arena.

“We can be seen as somebody that can help transcend the sport into the intercollegiate ranks,” Konya said. “We definitely could step into the shoes of being a leader in the industry.”

The move to have a varsity esports program comes with the times along with the abundant interest, according to Konya, and he believes this is only the beginning.

“The sky’s the limit,” Konya said. “I think it has a real prosperous future and we’ll see how its development goes from these early days.”