Monthly Update April '24

Dear Supporter} ,

We had a big April. Not only did we see the culmination of months of hard work making improvements and implementing them to deliver the Ireland Esports Collegiate Series Spring Finals Weekend, we also kicked off Project Nemesis 👀

Spring Finals launched with some great PR support from Silicon Republic. Held over 13 & 14 April out of Dogpatch Labs, we increased the event to two days. Some even said it was a better collegiate in-person event than what they've experienced in the UK!

Project Nemesis commenced at the tail end of April, this is our platform solution which is going to "unlock the power of esports gamer data". This project is solving our three-fold problem (see below) and the development timeline will see us release the MVP in good time to run the 2024/25 Ireland Esports Collegiate Series.

INDUSTRY NEWS

🗞️ In Focus – Roblox continues its push towards becoming a fully fledged digital platform, over the past few weeks we've seen them team up with Walmart to make virtual e-commerce a reality! This US only pilot test runs through May, allowing users over 13 to buy their virtual item and the physical one within their Roblox experience. Roblox has also revealed the ability to show targeted video ads, further challenging the dominance of social media platforms for those highly sought after advertising budgets.

🗞️ Animesports is a thing. Yep. Why now? Esports cross-overs with this form of pop culture aren't new (Kerry Waananen covers this back in '22). It's popularity among GenZ is growing. Interestingly, 2024 has seen increasing numbers of brands leveraging anime cross-overs.

🗞️ LinkedIn recently revealed it's new games feature, had a look yet? Playable once per day, they tap into the wave of puzzle-mania that helped games like Wordle find viral success. Apparently scores are organised by places of work allowing companies to be “ranked”!

🗞️ Esports and metaverse company Infinite Reality, the owners of esports organisation Rogue, has announced the acquisition of the Drone Racing League for $250m.

SUCCESSES

🚀 Ireland Esports Collegiate Series Spring Finals Weekend was a hit! The increased footprint enabled a stage led event with studio production, VIP and fan capacity plus sponsor friendly activation space - we've got a template to grow on multiple fronts now.

🚀 Partnership with GG Machines ✅ This is a really important one for us. Local partnership with a key stakeholder in the competitive gaming environment. Robert and his team are technical experts with immense esports experience.

🚀 We’ve kicked off our platform development, Project Nemesis, our Tech Lead Yannick Gloster has brought together a team of three to get things moving. The Alpha version is scheduled for testing mid-June, Beta end July before our September launch.

CHALLENGES

🎮 Nativz Esports Club: we recently announced a reset for our League of Legends First Team operation. Essentially we've changed the coach and player acquisition model to better reflect the (1) direction Riot is taking with their regional leagues, (2) the Tournament Organisers vision for the NLC and the (3) economics of the league's team player budgets as we understand them. More to follow next week as we continue to adapt to this change.

🎮 Ireland Collegiate: we're shifting the Collegiate Challenge from May to Sep, the play-off across all game titles between the top two Universities. Why? Good question, we'll get more impact when students return rather than near exam time before their holiday. It also gives us a better spread with Winter Finals (Dec) and Spring Finals (Apr).

🎮 Project Nemesis: it's a small but impactful change. We've shifted our primary domain from nativz.gg to nativzgaming.com and you'll now see that applied to our emails. irelandcollegiate.com remains unaffected and will host our proof of concept whitelabel site.

NEEDS

👀 Our investment round is focused on raising €275K. With a commitment to invest from Enterprise Ireland and an application for EIS Advanced Assured status pending from HMRC we've increased the value and impact for this round. If you'd like to find out more please email [email protected]

METRICS

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

💯 Social audience on official channels = up (again) by 5.1% 🔼

💯 LinkedIn followers = 925, up by 4.1% 🔼

💯 Unique nativz.gg web visitors = Up 5.9% on April 2023 🔼

💯 Opted in marketing database = currently changing ESP

COMING UP

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

📅 6 May - Nativz Esports Club's League of Legends First Team trials for the Summer Split commence.

📅 18-19 May (Date Change) - we're moving this one to September for all of the good reasons outlined above, will keep you updated as this builds.

📅 27 May - Nativz Esports Club's League of Legends First Team roster lock happens on this date. Expect to see the new Summer Roster revealed the day before at the latest.

📅 23 May - Amsterdam network meetup is work in progress with a couple of new contacts. More to follow on this one but if you are interested then drop me a line.

📅 4 June - NLC 1st Division Summer Split begins for League of Legends, we'll also welcome back our Co-Stream Team of Lisa, Zathdos and Sandbag!

We're continuing to test, learn and build - thanks for joining us on this journey.

Regards,

Kurt & the Nativz Gaming Team