Ghost Gaming takes commercial role in Kennesaw State Call of Duty team

Ghost Gaming and Kennesaw State University announced on Thursday, October 8, 2026, that the Atlanta-based organization will be the commercial development partner of a new Call of Duty team at the university, a program expected to launch officially in the 2026-27 academic year. The announcement, published on Ghost Gaming's own site and reported the same day by The Esports Advocate, places the program under Ghost Academy, with the name Ghost Academy x Kennesaw State University.

The arrangement splits the work between a professional esports organization and a university. Ghost brings coaching, competitive structure and its commercial network. Kennesaw State, often shortened to KSU, keeps everything that makes the players students. And the students around the team, not only the players, are meant to learn the business by building and running its sponsorships.

Ghost Gaming release, October 8, 2026; The Esports Advocate, October 8, 2026, and its College Esports Closures and Cuts Tracker.

What Ghost and Kennesaw State agreed

The release describes a strategic partnership that links high-level competition with career development, industry experience and commercial opportunities. Its first program is a Call of Duty team. From 2026-27, KSU will field a Premier roster in collegiate and amateur competitions approved by the game's publisher. The release says the program is meant to prepare students for collegiate, semi-professional and Tier 2 play, the level of competition just below the top professional league.

The Esports Advocate describes Ghost Academy as the organization's development program. Ghost's title in the deal is commercial development partner. In practice, it works with KSU on sponsorship and brand opportunities for the team, and supports it across coaching and competitive development. The Esports Advocate reported that the partners did not disclose the financial terms, or how sponsorship revenue will be shared.

"Collegiate esports has an opportunity to become much more than a place for students to compete in video games," said Todd Harris, chief executive of Ghost Gaming and of its parent company, Resurgens Gaming, in the release. "It can be a pathway into workforce development." Steve Kinsey, an associate director at KSU, said in the same release that the partnership would bridge the gap between gaming and educational, leadership and career experiences that prepare participants beyond the classroom and the arena.

Who does what

The release draws a clear line between the two partners. One side runs the team as an esports operation; the other runs it as a university program.

The split leaves the university in charge of everything tied to the players' status as students, and gives Ghost the parts that rest on its competitive experience, its media production and its contacts with brands.

Students on the business side

The career angle is what sets the deal apart from a plain sponsorship. The release lists the fields in which KSU students can gain hands-on experience through the program: broadcast and livestream production, live esports and event operations, marketing and social media, sponsorship sales and activation, content creation and video production, esports business and team management, game development and software, applications of artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship. It adds mentorship, workshops, networking and experiential learning with industry professionals.

Sponsorship activation also runs through The Esports Advocate's report. It means turning a signed deal into what the sponsor actually paid for: the logo on the jersey, the segment in the broadcast, the branded video. According to the release, the options on the table for the KSU team are jersey sponsorships, broadcast integrations, social and digital content, watch parties, live events, sponsored video series, student spotlights and collaborations with creators, and other experiences that connect brands with the KSU community. The Esports Advocate summed it up: students are to take part in building and activating those deals.

Why Call of Duty

Call of Duty is the partnership's first program. Ghost itself has competed in the game: The Esports Advocate listed Call of Duty among the titles Ghost competed in, with Fortnite, Rocket League and Valorant, when it reported the organization's youth partnership in 2023, and Resurgens Gaming described Ghost in May 2025 as a community-driven gaming organization with professional gamers and creators across Fortnite, Call of Duty, Valorant and Rocket League.

The release does not name the competitions the KSU roster will enter beyond their status as publisher-approved collegiate and amateur events, and it names no coach or player. Recruitment of the players falls to the university, under its own eligibility rules.

How Ghost built its Georgia education network

The KSU deal is the latest of several steps by which Ghost has tied its brand to schools and colleges in Georgia.

The Georgia Esports League was presented on August 23, 2022, as a statewide collegiate league, curriculum pathway and workforce development platform, announced with the Georgia Department of Economic Development and the Georgia Film Academy. The release called it the nation's first comprehensive statewide initiative of its kind and opened it to every two-year and four-year college in Georgia. It started with Rocket League, with more titles to follow, and Skillshot was to produce and stream the finals from its Atlanta esports campus with students involved in every aspect of the production. At the time, Harris was chief executive of both Skillshot Media and Ghost Gaming. The league's pathways already reached beyond playing: the release listed professional esports, work as a gaming creator on YouTube or Twitch, and roles behind the scenes such as programmer, artist or designer. The Georgia Film Academy, which said it had trained more than 10,000 Georgians through 28 public universities and technical colleges, was to help build the curriculum and give students hands-on experience with industry tools. The same release recalled that the Collegiate Esports Commissioner's Cup, produced by Skillshot with EsportsU and the Collegiate Sports Management Group at the Gateway Arena in College Park, Georgia, had generated what it put at US$1.7 million in local economic impact.

The youth academy announced on December 15, 2022, set out four career paths: professional competitor, content creator, livestream broadcaster and game designer, with online courses, in-person league play at partner venues across the country and lessons from people working in the industry. Its director, PK Graff, was presented as a teacher and instructional designer with more than a decade of experience, who had launched 11 middle school esports programs in Georgia and was general manager of seven varsity esports teams, and the academy's invitational events were to end at Ghost's headquarters and esports campus in Atlanta. Harris said at the launch that structured esports can turn young people's screen time into personal and skill development. The XP League partnership of February 2023 extended it: The Esports Advocate reported that XP League players in the Southeast would be recognized as Ghost Gaming Academy teams, with access to meet-and-greets, coaching and mentoring programs, professional and amateur play sessions, and youth development programs. Neither the financial terms nor the length of the deal was disclosed.

The Georgia Esports Network and the money behind it

The release presents the KSU partnership as an early example of a larger plan, the Georgia Esports Network. The statewide initiative is meant to connect colleges in Georgia with professional esports infrastructure, sponsors, media, workforce development and career opportunities. The release names no other college that has joined it.

It also gives the figure that frames Ghost's commitment: more than US$1 million a year for its operations in Georgia. That sum is not the value of the KSU deal. The release says it covers collegiate program development, competitive player development, workforce curriculum and certification, school esports from kindergarten to 12th grade, economic development and game development.

Behind Ghost stands Resurgens Gaming, founded in 2019 by Harris and Nabil Ismail and headquartered in Atlanta. Its release of May 9, 2025, announced a seven-figure Series Seed Plus round and described a group that includes Ghost Gaming, the live event and production company Skillshot, which owns and operates the Georgia Esports League, and the Resurgens Center, which manages more than 100,000 square feet of experiential and production space across metro Atlanta. Invest Georgia, a long-term investment program backed by the State of Georgia, took part in that round. The money was to launch Ghost Launchpad, a video game accelerator and publishing division based at the group's Atlanta headquarters, built around Unreal Editor for Fortnite and led by Brian Grayson, a former vice president at Hi-Rez Studios.

The context for colleges is less comfortable. The Esports Advocate's College Esports Closures and Cuts Tracker counts 26 schools that have closed or cut esports programs since 2022, a figure the outlet recalled in its report on the KSU deal, which it also logged in its new College Esports Deals Tracker.

The next step is the program's start. The release says the Call of Duty team is expected to launch officially in the 2026-27 academic year, and Harris said the same standard would extend to other Georgia universities in the future.

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