How Riot's esports broadcasting cadetship trains new production staff

Every professional esports match reaches its viewers through a production crew. Someone cuts between cameras, someone mixes the casters' voices with the sound of the game, someone pulls a replay of the decisive fight, someone puts the score and the player names on screen, and someone keeps the whole show on schedule. These are skilled jobs, learned on live shows.

One route into that work is a cadetship run by Riot Games, the publisher of League of Legends and Valorant, with the nonprofit 1,000 Dreams Fund. It places a small number of early-career people inside Riot's own broadcast operation for three paid months. Its 2026 edition was set out on January 15, 2026, when the fund announced the two people selected.

This guide explains how the program works as its organizers have described it: who runs it and why, the facility where it takes place, how it changed between its first edition and the second, who may apply, how applicants are selected, what cadets do during their three months, what the program pays for and what it does not promise.

1,000 Dreams Fund release of October 6, 2025, and The Esports Advocate, January 15, 2026.

What the cadetship is

The program carries two names. Riot Games and the press call it the Riot Games Esports Broadcasting Cadetship. The 1,000 Dreams Fund calls it the 1,000 Dreams Broadcast Cadetship, in partnership with Riot Games' Remote Broadcast Center, powered by AWS. Both names refer to the same program.

A cadetship, in this sense, is a paid training placement inside a working team. According to The Esports Advocate's report of the 2026 recipients, it offers training, mentorship and live production experience to people starting careers in esports broadcasting and production. The fund's own program page describes it as hands-on learning with Riot's broadcast team, through mentorship, shadowing staff and assisting with live productions on site.

Each edition is small. Two cadets are selected, and each spends three months working inside one of Riot's Remote Broadcast Centers. The selection is preceded by a series of free online masterclasses open to a much wider public, which serve both as a first contact with the craft and as part of the application path.

The three partners behind it

The program rests on three organizations, each with its own part.

The 1,000 Dreams Fund, often shortened to 1DF, is a nonprofit launched in 2016. Its founder and chief executive is Christie Garton. Its release of October 6, 2025, describes its mission as giving talented women and students in need scholarships, mentorship and other resources, and says it has granted more than US$1 million to students, for costs such as study abroad, classroom technology and travel to conferences. Two years earlier, Esports Insider put the total at more than US$775,000 granted across the United States, and listed earlier gaming and esports projects with Twitch, Allied Esports, JBL and HyperX. Garton said in the 2025 release that the fund's mission is to provide resources many students lack, naming funding, mentorship and hands-on learning experience.

Riot Games hosts the cadets in its broadcast operation and provides the training on site. Allyson Gormley, Riot's global operations director for its Remote Broadcast Centers, has spoken for the company about the program at its launch in 2023 and in the announcements of 2025 and 2026. The Esports Advocate's report of January 2026 gave her title as global operations director for esports broadcast and production.

Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is the third name. The fund's release describes AWS as Riot's global partner and its official provider of cloud AI, machine learning, deep learning and cloud services, and says AWS powers the broadcast center where the 2026 cadets work.

Where the format comes from

Esports Insider presented the cadetship at its launch as part of the fund's BroadcastHER initiative for women in esports and gaming. That initiative had grown before. In a release of February 13, 2020, the 1,000 Dreams Fund announced the expansion of its BroadcastHER Academy into a one-year fellowship for women preparing for careers in esports and gaming, on screen and behind the scenes. The fellowship named Allied Esports and HyperX as partners, with the fund's own channel on Twitch as an outlet for the fellows' work.

Ten women were to be selected that year. Each was to receive a US$1,000 microgrant for education and one 60-minute session by video conference with an executive from one of the partners, paired on the skills and career interests of both mentor and mentee. The fellowship also offered an all-expenses-paid trip to shadow the Allied Esports team, including at the HyperX Esports Arena in Las Vegas, with time with its broadcast unit and a chance to call a game from a professional booth, and access to what the fund called pop-up opportunities with partners, from live events, conferences and tournaments to project-based contract roles, internships, apprenticeships and full-time jobs. The visit itself was to include a hands-on tour, a meal with an Allied executive or a broadcast professional, and a video reel or live-streamed work for each fellow to keep. The fund presented itself in that release as a national nonprofit.

Several of the fellowship's pieces reappear in the cadetship: the 60-minute mentor sessions, the pop-up opportunities with partners, and the idea of shadowing a working broadcast team. The difference is scale and length. Where the fellowship offered a visit, the cadetship offers three paid months inside the production itself.

The Remote Broadcast Center explained

The cadetship is built around one kind of facility. In an on-site production, the crew and its control room work at the venue and travel from event to event. A remote broadcast center works the other way. The players and the cameras stay at the venue, the video and sound travel over the network, and the crew produces the show from a permanent facility far away.

The fund's release describes a centralized global broadcast model with Remote Broadcast Centers, or RBCs, in Dublin, Ireland, and in Seattle, Washington. In the release's own description, the center adds capacity for Riot's global esports content and live events and allows more efficient, scalable and sustainable productions. The release says the center was launched under the codename Project Stryker, dates the partnership between Riot and AWS to July 2022, and names Riot Direct, Riot's own global internet service provider, as part of the setup.

For a cadet, the model has one practical consequence. A remote center is not tied to one league or one game. The fund's program page says the RBC works across several Riot titles, events and shows, and that cadets therefore work across titles rather than on a single game. A cadet works on several productions from one building over the three months. The travel stipend the program pays, a fixed sum toward a cost, is for the trip to and from the center.

The first edition, in 2023

The program was first announced in September 2023. Esports Insider reported on September 26, 2023, that Riot and the fund had created the cadetship to open opportunities for women interested in esports broadcast and production work.

That first edition was built around a Riot Remote Broadcast Center, which Esports Insider described as a high-tech esports broadcast facility. It began in early October 2023 with four masterclasses, and applicants had to sign up for and attend at least one of them to be eligible. Two selected applicants were to receive a paid three-month placement at the center, with travel expenses and accommodation funding among the benefits.

At the launch, Gormley told Esports Insider that cultivating diversity was an obligation to the future of the esports industry rather than a choice. She added that she hoped the program would bring new talent into broadcast production roles in esports.

The 2026 edition moves to Seattle

The fund announced the next edition on October 6, 2025, in a release issued with Riot and AWS, describing the program as returning for a second year. In the same release, Gormley described programs of this kind as vital to opening the door for new professionals. Two features changed.

The first is the place. The 2026 cadets work at the Seattle center. When the recipients were named, Gormley said, according to The Esports Advocate, that Riot was hosting the cadetship in its Seattle Remote Broadcast Center for the first time.

The second is the audience. The 2023 edition was presented as a program for women. The 2025 release describes a program aimed at students and early-career job seekers, and the fund's program page states in its questions and answers that it is open to all, with priority for people early in their esports career.

The two people selected for 2026 were announced on January 15, 2026. The Esports Advocate reported that they came from Indiana University Bloomington and the University of North Florida. Gormley said on that occasion that the partnership with the fund invests in current talent and builds a pipeline of future leaders for esports production worldwide. The fund's program page set the placement period at February to May 2026, with dates subject to change.

Who can apply

The fund's program page lists the conditions for the 2026 edition. Applicants must meet all the legal requirements for employment in the United States. They must be at least 18 years old. They must be able to travel to Seattle and live there for the period of the cadetship. The page's questions and answers add that there is no upper age limit, that applications are accepted from anywhere in the world provided those conditions are met, and that no previous experience is required.

The release of October 2025 describes the profile the organizers had in mind: students in college or university with an interest in esports production, or applicants who already have some experience of it, with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and mathematics encouraged.

From masterclass to selection

The application path for the 2026 edition ran over about three months, from the opening of applications to the announcement of the cadets. The fund's release and program page give its stages.

The release placed the masterclasses after the information session, with their dates to be announced, and set the selection of the cadets for January 2026. Applications opened at noon Pacific time on Monday, October 13, 2025, and the release presented the virtual session of October 27 as the program's launch event as well. The original deadline was November 14, and the extended one fell at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on Friday, November 21, 2025. The masterclasses are the widest part of the funnel. The program page describes them as free and virtual, with insight from industry professionals, preparation for cover letters, resumes, applications and interviews, an introduction to Riot's culture and values, and a first look at broadcast skills such as media asset management, instant replay, audio and graphics. Applicants who could not attend were invited to submit a summary of the recordings instead. That is a change from the first edition, when attending at least one session was a condition of eligibility.

The program page states that selection is based on the content of the application and that every application is reviewed with fairness and impartiality. The shortlisted candidates then go through a CV review and an interview.

Inside the rotation

The core of the cadetship is a rotation. The program page lists five departments a cadet passes through at the broadcast center, before finishing in one of them chosen by mutual agreement. The release adds hands-on training alongside the center's team, and says cadets can hone their skills in the center's Technical Operations Center. The program page presents the rotation as a way for each cadet to find the department that fits best before the final placement is agreed.

The fund's questions and answers list the kinds of roles a cadet is exposed to in the same terms: audio mixing, editing, graphic design, media asset management, broadcast work and other jobs behind the camera. The page says cadets learn how shows are put together in real time, across departments.

What the cadetship pays for

The announcements describe the cadetship as a paid placement without giving the amount. The other benefits are set out in the release of October 2025 and repeated in The Esports Advocate's report of the 2026 recipients.

Accommodation is funded for the whole of the placement, and the program page says housing is coordinated by Riot and the fund. A travel stipend covers the journey to and from Seattle. Each cadet receives a US$500 grant toward a career coach who specializes in gaming and esports, and two 60-minute mentor sessions, which the release places at the start and the end of the program. Cadets also get further mentorship on site, a behind-the-scenes tour of the center, and access to what the organizers call pop-up experiences and learning opportunities with Riot's partners. The release places those partner experiences in 2026 and says the extra mentorship on site comes from the partners as well.

What it does not promise

The cadetship is a training placement, not a job offer. The fund's questions and answers state that a position at Riot is not guaranteed at the end of the program. If a relevant job opens, cadets are considered on an equal footing with other candidates, according to the page.

It is also a small program: two placements per edition, beside masterclasses open to anyone. For other internships, the page refers students to Riot's own university programs.

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