Monthly Update May '24

Dear Supporter},

Build, build, build was the theme in May. Events, PR, Networks, Pipelines and Software of course! There's some great updates for this month.

We're shifting the Collegiate Challenge from May to September (top two Uni's play-off for the title), created a new Summer Tournament for 1-7 July AND our new Academy Programme is coming together nicely. Expect these news items to drop across the next 4-6 weeks with other supporting content - the tournament announcement is live now.

We hit the road too. First visit to Riot Games' Project Stryker in Dublin followed by 2024 Blockchain Ireland Week where I joined a panel discussing Webs in Sport (and Esports). That was followed by a number of meetings on the fringe of Soccerex over in Amsterdam.

Meanwhile Project Nemesis, our platform for unlocking the power of gamer data is moving swiftly. Alpha on track for internal testing in June plus the design stage is now in full swing.

INDUSTRY NEWS

🗞️ In Focus – we're witnessing a lot of excitement in the gaming industry with new innovations, investment returning and mainstream interest increasing. Behind the gloss of the looming Esports World Cup and various initiatives from the top tier, the local 'grassroots' esports scene has suffered another blow. On the heels of Tournament Organiser Promod filing for bankruptcy, Freaks4U followed by stepping out of the NLC, there are reports that Supernova Events and Esports Limited, the company trading as Player1 Events which ran the UK's Insomnia Gaming Festival, has entered voluntary liquidation with £8m of debts.

Despite that news we have a selection of long reads that suggest all is not lost;

🗞️ French Esports organisation Karmine Corp (aka K-Corp) has announced the acquisition of Les Arènes in Evry, France with capacity of 3,000 seats. Take a look at their tour here.

🗞️ Esports News-UK revealed that revenues from UK games events jumped 140% year-on-year thanks to esports and festivals. Check out the full report here.

🗞️ FIA and sim racing game iRacing have announced the creation of the FIA F4 Esports Global Championship, an all-new esports series that will start in September.

SUCCESSES

🚀 TU Dublin is a focal point for us, their Valorant team reached the recent European University Masters play-offs and we've now agreed to host the 2023/24 Collegiate Challenge in September at their Grangegorman Campus where they'll face off against SETU.

🚀 Nativz Esports Club League of Legends First Team is back with Demb returning as Head Coach and the starting roster contracted ahead of Tuesday nights' first round game vs Nord.

🚀 Jan Biernacki joins the Leadership Team as Academy Lead, the current Esports Society President at SETU is a well respected member of the Collegiate Community and has been instrumental in the success of SETU's teams to date.

CHALLENGES

🎮 Nativz Esports Club: the NLC took a hit with stories surfacing about Spring Champions Lionscreed not fulfilling their financial obligations with players and staff. After weeks of discussions Tournament Organiser Leagues.GG ejected Lionscreed from the competition.

🎮 Ireland Collegiate Alumni Guild: with the Series now complete we want to create a way to reconnect with Alumni players. There's at least five years of graduates that played in previous incarnations of Ireland Collegiate. We are creating the Ireland Collegiate Alumni Guild, a community of past players which is initially built around timely communications and events - the upcoming Summer Tournament being the first!

🎮 Project Nemesis: at the heart of this project is first party data, it's something that we feel is blindly overlooked in esports' second tier and below. We've been testing basic email engagement with the Ireland Collegiate Player base and the results are, well as expected. From not using this channel previously, the campaigns so far are exceeding industry benchmarks. There's a lot more to follow here!

NEEDS

👀 Our Nativz Esports Club Academy will be the biggest esports talent pool on the island of Ireland. We're bringing in strategic partners to help build a development programme for the players around the performance aspects. What we're looking for are local brands that want to sponsor an Academy team for €1,500 each, we'll have six teams!

Please email me on [email protected] if you can help directly or with an intro.

METRICS

The following metrics are for the period of 1-31 May 2023:

💯 Social audience on ALL official channels = up (again) by 5.2% 🔼

💯 LinkedIn Nativz Gaming followers = 955, up by 3.2% 🔼

💯 TikTok (Nativz Esports Club) = 220K views 🆕

💯 Unique nativz.gg web visitors = Down 42.6% on May 2023 🔽

💯 Opted in marketing database = data available next month

COMING UP

Take a look at what we've got coming up over the summer period:

📅 4 June - 17 July - NLC 1st Division Summer Split, we welcome the new roster and our Co-Stream Team of HeyLisa, Zathdos + Sandbag return! All games will be simulcast live on the Nativz Esports Club Twitch, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) channels. View schedule here.

📅 1-7 July - Ireland Esports Collegiate Series 2024 Summer Tournament, open for both current and past Irish students and featuring 10 esports titles and broadcast live.

📅 September - 2023/24 Ireland Esports Collegiate Challenge @ TU Dublin Grangegorman Campus swiftly following Freshers Fair and before the start of the 2024/25 Series!

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

Regards,

Kurt & the Nativz Gaming Team