FSC Esports club faces large budget cut, club feeling disappointed

By Talise Peele 

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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. - The Farmingdale State College Esports club has faced numerous budget cuts over the years, but the most recent one is the most damaging. The Treasurer Ryan Barone talks about the struggles the club has faced since then. 

The FSC Esports Club is one of the 13 club sports offered at Farmingdale State College. Farmingdale 10 teams with five active and has their very own room on the Farmingdale Campus. 

The Esports room contains over 12 gaming PC’s along with gaming chairs and consoles. However, the budget cuts to the club are making it harder for the club to keep upkeeping the room. 

“The Budget cuts have affected us in ways like not being able to update our PC’s” stated Ryan Barone, the treasurer of the Esports club. "This affects our teams because they lag and games have crashed before causing us to lose playoffs before.” 

Over the course of the last year, the previous $10,000 budget the club once had was cut in half to $5,000. The large drop is preventing the club from making sure they can keep their members happy. 

Due to the increasing price of RAM, the club would never be able to upgrade all the computers in the room. This comes to the dismay of many computer-based teams. 

“Our Marvel Rivals team struggles with these outdated computers,” Barone says. “They usually opt for playing at home because the computers cannot run the game at a level of playing for them that they are satisfied with.” 

The club has not only wanted to update the computers, but they also wanted to purchase new consoles. One of the items the esports team has wanted for community events Is a Nintendo Switch 2, but the high price won’t work with their budget.

“It's pretty rough, per semester we have to pay for each team for the league that we participate in” said Barone “We pretty much lose out on all that money immediately because the leagues add up to around $3,000.” 

There are ways for the Esports club to appeal for a change in budget. Unfortunately, they haven’t had the opportunity to fill out the right forms and hold a meeting with those in charge of budgeting.  

The club used to be able to host fundraising events for the teams with the campus community. However, they were changed from an independent club to being under student life which prevents them from doing this. 

Even with all the hardships, the Esports team continues to do everything it can to support itself. They continue to hold free community events ranging from competitive to non-competitive games such as Among Us or Super Smash Brothers. 

The Esports club hosts monthly events in their discord server, as well as live streams for team events and charity fundraisers. To find out more about the Esports club and find their media profiles, visit here!