Monthly Update February '24

Hi Reader,

The past six weeks have been tough. Ultimately we've had to "tough it out" as we dealt with a few setbacks. We've navigated our way through an investment falling over (for circumstances out of our potential investors control) and had an extremely disappointing early exit in the Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC) Spring Split despite increasing the budget.

Through a combination of resilience and serendipity plus some good old fashioned graft, we're looking towards the next couple of weeks with genuine confidence. Here's why;

🛜 nativzgaming.com was released on Tuesday, this is the result of careful reflection on early Angel feedback to our current Investment Round and to start building our client base.

🤝 we're gaining momentum with our brand partnership programme and are in some meaningful talks with a few sports rights holders as we start looking to bridge esports with sports.

📺 despite the League of Legends Pro Team missing the NLC Spring Play-Offs we took a huge step forward with our successful Co-Streams of their Official Matches simulcast live across Twitch, X and YouTube.

🖥️ preparations for our platform MVP continue at a steady pace as we aim for a Summer release, an outline of features is now available on nativzgaming.com with release timelines to follow.

📆 the stage is set for the Ireland Esports Collegiate Series Spring Finals, this event builds on the Winter Finals back in December, our first in-person esports event....we can't wait to announce this one!

As for looking back at February, we've selected a few interesting industry news pieces and included updates across our business successes, challenges, needs and what's coming up;

INDUSTRY

👉🏼 Feature News - an article from our friends at Media Exchange Group makes an impressive case for the future of brand growth coming from gaming. It's no longer a niche area and the perception of audience profiles is woefully inaccurate. Everything we have been told about “gamers” is simply incorrect. For example, the average age of gamers continues to climb gradually towards later 30s, but this is not due to younger generations dropping off in interest. If anything, it is the opposite. Social needs of Gen Alpha (<13) are met by gaming, finding this community significantly less toxic than social media platforms. Read the full article here.

👉🏼 "The path from Collegiate to Pro in esports" by ESI caught our attention! They raise the prospect of ‘multi-sport’ athletes that combine esports and sports surfacing in the US as early as this year and a likely increase in scholarships for esports players.

👉🏼 MNM Gaming have entered administration bringing to an end what was a largely well respected UK based esports organisation. Founded in 2014, owing their Rainbow Six Siege players in excess of £200,000.

👉🏼 Now Nativz has an office established in Amsterdam we thought it fitting to share this profile piece on the esports ecosystem in The Netherlands.

SUCCESS

🚀 We entered February with Round 4 of NLC 1st Division Spring Split looking strong, our all new roster and live co-stream was up and running. All of this was thanks to our three coaching staff, five players, three presenters and two looking after the live production.

🚀 Ireland Esports Collegiate Spring Series commenced on 5 February bringing all 16 leading Universities and Colleges back into action. That's all down to our five person leadership team, 10 creators (two each day), three in production AND the 100 teams competing in each of the six game titles!

🚀 We went viral on TikTok! (well sort of). We levelled up our TikTok game thanks to some research on the ever changing and confusing algorithm. With a total of 2 million views, 250,000 likes and 700 new followers in February, we're closing in on the surprisingly profitable TikTok Creativity Program.

Check out the Ireland Collegiate Team Range here in the Nativz Esports Clubs' Online Shop

CHALLENGES

🎮 Economics of the NLC came into question during this split, with the entrance of Lionscreed we saw them enter with a roster that was an estimated 3-5x the value of the next team, they've been open in their aim to reach the top four of the EMEA Masters at the first opportunity and see the NLC as the path to get there. In isolation that strategy works if you've got the budget and have no ambition for sustainability. For the other teams in the league this approach calls into question what their objectives should be if they don't increase their budgets accordingly to compete. That's amplified by Riot's recent changes to the allocation of EMEA Masters places for each of the European Regional Leagues, while the NLC has two places changes for 2024 mean the second place has a much harder route to the Group Stages.

NEEDS

👀 We're looking for introductions to Angel Investors! Our current round is targeting a raise of €275K. As we touched on earlier, we've just released our new nativzgaming.com website presenting the broader business proposition. If you are interested in more information or can make an introduction please do let me know via [email protected]

METRICS

The following metrics are for the period of 1 - 29 February 2024:

💯 Social audience on official channels = up (again) by 21.9% 🔼

💯 Unique web visitors = Up 84.2% on February 2023 🔼

💯 Opted in marketing database = 6.0% increase in the month 🔼

COMING UP

Take a look at what we've got coming up over the next 10 weeks:

📅 13 March - 2024 NLC Ist Division Spring Play-Offs started, top two teams from the Spring Split gain qualification to the EMEA Masters which run from 18-29 April

📅 13-14 April - 2023/24 Ireland Esports Collegiate Spring Semester Finals Weekend in Dublin, guest list for the Saturday and open for students on the Sunday

📅 18-19 May - Ireland Esports Collegiate Challenge is coming along, the framework is there and we're moving at a good pace so stay tuned on this one

Please keep the faith, we're building and we love having you with us on this journey.

Regards,

Kurt & the Nativz Team