Fans of the Princeton Tigers have just concluded a successful hockey season and are out to support the university’s top-ranked lacrosse team.  But there is a new spectator sport vying for their attention.

In a Collegiate Star League match on a recent Friday, a competitor representing Princeton faced off against an opponent representing Tsinghua University in China, 6,800 miles away, in an online game of StarCraft, a science fiction video game.

About 60 spectators watched this initial international exhibition match in Princeton.

There are 27 colleges in the league, including Harvard, Yale, MIT and Cal-Berkeley.  The trend here echoes a fanatical following in Korea, where professional StarCraft teams have corporate sponsors and electronic sports competitions draw millions of dollars in revenue.