Meet the Gen Z college students who turned Excel into a competitive esport—they’re competing in spreadsheet challenges and it’s helping them land jobs | Fortune

But at dozens of universities across the country, devoted Excel fans are gathering in classrooms, firing up their laptops, and racing against the clock to solve complex spreadsheet challenges. What started as a niche hobby has evolved into a competitive collegiate esport that culminates each year in a global competition sponsored by Microsoft, aired on ESPN, and features a $100,000 prize fund.

Beyond the novelty of being a spreadsheet master, participants and sponsors say Excel esports offers something more meaningful: a way for Gen Z students to turn their passions into professional opportunities. It’s giving students a chance to showcase highly sought-after skills like problem-solving under pressure, analytical thinking, and the ability to collaborate in team-based environments.

For Nate Insko, now a senior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) on the school’s Excel esports team, that edge proved tangible. While applying for post-grad jobs, he interviewed with companies including Wells Fargo, Boston Consulting Group, and Raymond James, and nearly every time, recruiters asked about his experience as a competitive Excel player.

“When you’re rolling your finger down the resume and you see, ‘Oh my gosh, competitive Excel, What is this like? I want to talk to this kid about this,’” Insko told Fortune. “Just that alone is enough to get you in the interview room.”

That distinction ultimately helped him secure a role as an incoming investment banking analyst at Harris Williams—proof that in a crowded job market, even something as unlikely as competitive Excel can be the edge that sets a candidate apart.

Turning Excel skills into a job offer

Excel competitions themselves are far from ordinary. Students build complex formulas to perform everything from risk-and-return calculations for stock portfolios to mock video game avatar tracking systems. It’s high speed, high-pressure problem-solving—just with spreadsheets.

That technical prowess has turned players into unlikely campus celebrities. Last academic year, it wasn’t football or baseball that brought home a championship trophy at UTK—it was Excel.

Ben Northern, who was finishing his industrial engineering master’s program, was part of the 2024 Microsoft Excel World Championship team. After six months of competition, they bested 8,000 students from more than 70 schools worldwide, culminating in a final showdown in Las Vegas. Northern described the victory as “literally a dream come true.”

“A year ago, I had no clue what Excel esports was, and now here we were, world champions,” he told Fortune. 

The title quickly paid off. One company flew Northern out after finding him through the championship, and he ultimately landed a full-time project management role at Pilot Company, a truck-stop chain majority-owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Eric Kelley, a finance professor at UTK and faculty advisor for the Excel esports team, said the skills used with competitive spreadsheets give students an automatic leg up in the hiring process—but it goes beyond companies caring about applicants knowing how to properly wrangle and analyze data.

“The interviewer will look at their resume, and they’ll see [Excel esports], and they’ll say, what is that? Tell me about it,” Kelley said. “They get to tell a story.”

As AI makes it easier for students to polish resumes and cover letters, Kelley said having something tangible, competitive, and niche like Excel esports can make all the difference.

“What I tell my students is the world is hungry for problem solvers, and if you can demonstrate that you can solve problems, then you’re valuable to some employer,” he said.

NIL isn’t just for popular sports—even Excel esports teams are landing deals

Excel esports has also begun attracting sponsorship money, which is typically reserved for traditional athletics.

After one of the team members applied for a corporate job at Weigel’s—a local convenience store chain with about 90 locations—the company took interest in the Excel squad. It signed one of the first name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals in Excel esports, providing funding for travel and equipment.

“It’s a win-win for everyone,” said Greg Adkins, president of New Frame Creative, a Knoxville-based marketing firm that coordinates Weigel’s NIL deals. He helped produce a viral Instagram video featuring the team—shot with the same polish typically reserved for football or basketball players.

Having an NIL sponsorship to your name can also travel well beyond campus, Adkins added.

“If you’re talking to two candidates for a job, and one of them says, I know how to use Microsoft Excel, and the other one says, I’m so good at Microsoft Excel I got a sponsorship from a large convenience store chain,” Adkins said. “I definitely think it’s an advantage.”