Monthly Update April '23

Hi Reader,

April has been about building.

While the Valorant Team continue to turn heads our League of Legends preparations continued as we build into June's Summer Split (second half of the season). The one pleasant surprise was seeing South East Technological University qualify for the Collegiate Rocket League World Championships!

We've been strengthening our commercial programme, in particular progress on partnership opportunities and improvements to the current retail and membership products plus, finalising our digital collectible strategy.

Although this update focuses on April, we can't forget that our second birthday passed by over the weekend. We took the opportunity to share a celebration video of our milestones in that time!

Please do take a look below at range of updates we have for you as follows;

INDUSTRY

👉🏼 The UK Competition & Markets Authority took the headline with their decision to block Microsoft’s $68.7bn Activision Blizzard acquisition, according to Warren Buffet they've made a mistake! 

Here's a few other topical articles to take a look into which focus on the state of play for the esports industry;

👉🏼 It's not all rosey out there, in Denmark we saw Tricked Esports close their doors swiftly followed by Copenhagen Flames who also filed for bankruptcy - here's some final words from Flames CEO Steffen Thomsen

👉🏼 Ever heard of Co-Streaming? It's another reason why we like the innovative side of esports, essentially its where Publishers (i.e. Riot Games) allow content creators to stream a live broadcast of a match on their personal Twitch channels with their own commentary. It's proved successful in boosting overall viewership!

👉🏼 It was written in the stars, we touched on Rocket League being a great option for football clubs in last month's email - perhaps PSG took the hint as they recently announced a partnership with UK based Tundra to re-enter the title after some time out.

SUCCESS

🚀 Nativz Valorant secure some important points in the Beacon Series from their recent games in the Leagues.gg, FEL & TheGooseHouse tournament majors (here's a glimpse of how the stats are covered)

🚀 Our new League of Legends Head Coach has signed and we’ll be announcing him next week. Trials are well underway ahead of the NLC Division 1 Summer Split beginning June 6

🚀 South East Technological University (SETU) qualified for the Collegiate Rocket League (CRL) World Championships straight out of our very own Collegiate Series. They’ll be waving the Irish flag over in Dallas from 2-4 June, we’ll make sure you hear how they get on!

CHALLENGES

🎮 Time. This past month has moved extremely quickly but fortunately our team is developing, alignment on the vision is there which has become more evident as we've bought more people into the organisation. For example, we were only approach to take over Ireland's Esports Collegiate Series two weeks before it started last September - we made time to build a growth strategy for 2023/24 and we're excited about it.

NEEDS

👀 Retail range is looking strong but would look much better on you, we've got adults and kids sizes plus male and female options thanks to our partners at Oxen! Shop online here with items starting at £20.

METRICS

The following metrics are for the period of 1 - 30 April 2023:

💯 Social audience on official channels = 5.2% continued growth

💯 Unique web visitors = Up 15.6% on April 2022

💯 Opted in marketing database = 2.3% increase in the month

COMING UP

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

📣 This afternoon we release the first of six short-form content pieces on LinkedIn. We look back at our first Ireland Esports Industry event where we tackled Gaming + Esports + Web3, the Global opportunity for Ireland - some real thought leading conversation!

📣 We've secured our new Nativz League of Legends First Team Head Coach who we'll be announcing in the coming days along with our schedule of games!

📣 Inaugural Nativz Collegiate Challenge @ GamerFest’s Summer LAN Festival is happening this coming 27-28 May at the RDS in Dublin, ticket information is available here.

Enjoy the week ahead.

Regards,

Kurt & the Nativz Team