Starting a ARPG division in a university e-sports club: How do real-life POE meetups/events work?

Hello,

My name is YJ Shin, and my poe account name is also that https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/YJShin.

My university (University of British Columbia - UBC, in Canada) has a very large esports club, known as the UBC esports association, or UBCEA (https://www.facebook.com/ubcesports/?fref=ts). We are bigger than any of the varsity sports teams at our university, and our teams have won over 190k CAD (about 143000 USD) over the last year from collegiate esports tournaments. Our league of legends team won AICC (http://event.afreeca.tv/aicc/) and is currently the best collegiate league of legends team in the world. All five of our main players have been offered places in LCS teams.

I have been tasked with starting an ARPG division (poe, d3, d2, torchlight, grim dawn, whatever else people play). The focus will be mostly on POE and D3. I have to plan events for the year and submit a budget. This is a brand new experimental division for the club.

I am a POE veteran. Owned almost every item that has existed, played almost every mainstream and some niche builds there are. But I still have no idea how "POE events" would actually work. Obviously we would have map rotations, help new players with builds/gear, do and train for races together, manipulate the market, scam noobs on trade chat, and so on. But all that stuff can be and should be done online. How about meeting up IRL? Our club president wants me to have real life meetups and the club is willing to provide $$ for food and renting time at our partnered PC cafe's. What would a bunch of arpg players do? Talk about meta and market over food/drinks? It's not like starcraft or dota or league of legends where we can gather to watch pro games together, or have cash prize tournaments at pc cafes. I guess we can meet up and play races together. What else?

I have no idea what i'm doing

Since ARPGS aren't a competitive game nor are they like speedrunning communities. It would work best like a general video game section.

Which is a problem if they expect anything out of the "e-sports" side of ARPGs. At best it would be a developing a casual (as in uncompetitive) section of your club for people to play stuff like MMOs, ARPGs, talk about single player games like dark souls ect.

Games where players come together that may be hard/involving, but without a competitive aspect to them. So you can try to be the bleeding edge on meta/the market and teach everyone how to be great at their chosen game.

Only thing they can show off is brilliant builds they made off themselves or compete with everyone else in races/being number 1 in ladder but sponsored by the school instead.
But main issue with bringing a team as number 1 since PoE is a time-sink game as oppose to skill based.

Which means you have to play the most while decently good instead of being the best in matches/sections that matter. Meaning most students can't go on 18 hours binges for a week/2 weeks anyway be on the bleeding edge.

Outside of that an "esports" section for ARPGs would fail, unlike I said you bundle it above with many other types of people just there to support the club (this is important if you want a really big club with more recognition) + fill in the niches to attract fans/viewers to the club.