AI impacting Esports, Collegiate to Company, Academy rolls on and more

Hi there,

Yep we’re squeezing this in at the last moment, April marked a transition point — we closed out the Collegiate Series and doubled down on testing Office Showdown as a product that can connect working professionals through play.

It’s early days, but the bones are there. The goal now is to bed it in for 2025–26 and build a format we can scale beyond Dublin.

If the Collegiate Series is the talent funnel, the Company Series is the payoff — a way to monetise the base we’ve built, keep alumni engaged, and continue building something for Ireland that we hope is replicable.

We’re now into Week 4 of the tournament, launching with a pilot series has allowed us to gain valuable insights and draw important learnings for the upcoming 2025/26 Company Series.

The stand out points have been around communication channels and enabling flexibility - a more in depth look at what we’ve taken from the pilot so far is available here.

Our short reads, long reads, successes, challenges…well you know the rest, they follow below 👇🏼

INDUSTRY NEWS

🗞️ In Focus – April saw a significant surge in the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the esports industry.

From enhancing player performance analytics to optimising viewer experiences, AI is reshaping the competitive gaming landscape. Organisations are leveraging AI-driven tools to analyse in-game strategies, predict opponent moves and provide real-time feedback to players.

Moreover, AI is being used to personalise content for viewers, offering tailored match highlights and interactive statistics. This technological advancement is not only elevating the level of competition but also enriching the spectator experience, marking a new era in esports evolution.

Here’s our selection of short and long reads from across the esports and gaming media;

SUCCESSES

🚀 Collegiate Series Finals done. The weekend of April 11 - 13 saw our strongest colleges battle it out for grand final glory with an online event this time. Check out the short 4 minute highlights package here.

🚀 Office Showdown Pilot Tournament kicked off with Rocket League, Valorant, LoL, and CS2 — teams from Logitech G, startups from Dogpatch Labs combined, public sector alumni, our friends at GGMachines and even our own Nativz crew. It’s fun, it’s scrappy, it’s got momentum.

🚀 Nativz Esports Club Academy, signed our new team for League of Legends for the new split in the Four Nations. Valorant team also continued battling in their competition. Our Rocket League team headed into the RLCS in a new set of wheels.

CHALLENGES

We’ve been seeing difficulty around our in-person esports events, we’re currently looking into these hurdles and how we can overcome them.

🕹️ Lack of Local Footfall - Student attendance from non-participating universities didn’t justify the spend — even with different ticketing strategies in play.

🕹️ Game Title ≠ Universal Appeal - League of Legends fans don’t automatically care about Valorant. The same way only a few rugby heads would show up for cricket. It’s a fragmented audience and each title is its own subculture, especially due to the complex nature of some esports titles.

🕹️ Allegiance-Based Hype Doesn’t Travel (Yet) - We experimented with uni-loyalty as the glue — asking students to support their team no matter the title. The response was limited.

Reflections on these points have led to the following opportunities for us:

👉🏼 Experience-Led Events Are the Way Forward - The future is blending esports with a broader experience. If we want real bums on seats, we need more than just gameplay. Think esports + social + IRL vibes.

👉🏼 Understanding Around Game Titles - Games nowadays are getting harder and harder to understand as new dimensions continue to be added. We’re aiming to offset this with educational content in order to provide enough of an understanding to enable spectators to enjoy all our titles rather than just their favourite.

👉🏼 Uniting the Uni’s - In the coming Winter Series we’re looking to dive further into the story lines between the Colleges & Universities. Increased focus on the Collegiate Challenge leaderboard, College spotlights and content emphasising the rivalries, narratives and hype produced by play should help.

With that in mind, we opted not to run an in-person Spring Final at Dogpatch Labs — as brilliant a venue as it is, we just weren’t making the most it.

Perhaps that location is better suited to Office Showdown!

NEEDS

Go on, take a look. It’s the result of the poll we ran last month. Reminder is that there’s no customs fees either…

METRICS

The following metrics are for the period of 1-31 March 2025:

COMING UP (& UNDERWAY)

Take a look at what we've got coming up:

📅 20:00 BST Monday - Thursday - Office Showdown Pilot Series

📅 18:00 BST June 5 - Nativz League of Legends Academy Team 4 Nations Upper Bracket Final

📅 20:00 June 9 - 12 - Office Showdown Pilot Series Finals Week

Thanks for reading, it’s summer from tomorrow too.

Let’s all say this together - “I’m going to share this with my friends and family.”

Regards,

Kurt & the Nativz Gaming Team

OFFICIAL PARTNERS OF NATIVZ GAMING