Hi {{first_name | there}},

Looking back at November it was another step forward for our Irish esports ecosystem — Ireland Esports Leagues — Schools, Collegiate and Company all progressing, powered by a growing community network and the next iteration of our platform Nemesis.

Collegiate and Company Series’ settled into rhythm. Ireland Challengers League for Counter-Strike joined as our latest national esports community partner. Behind the scenes, we continued to build the strategy for our stretch into education thanks to the direction of our Collegiate and Schools Advisory Committees.

This month was meaningful. It was the moment where our last structural improvements to the Collegiate Series came to life - separating performance from social competition, increased focus on building our Student Rep network and deepening our delivery with Red Bull Ireland. We also fine tuned our acquisition and onboarding approach for the Company Series, Office Showdown.

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

🗞️ In Focus – More teams, stronger top-tier squads and a strategic shift across campuses. This month’s In Focus explores how the Ireland Esports Collegiate Series is evolving from participation-first to performance-ready.

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

🚀 Competition delivery at scale, two of three IEL pillars ran concurrently — Collegiate and Company — proving the system is capable and unlocking more improvements to strengthen further as we build the Schools model.

🚀 Schools Advisory Committee impact is already telling after just two meetings, the vision is there and the strategy is forming. Our pathway to delivering our first pilot is defined. Now to put the pieces of the puzzle into place.

🚀 Community network strengthened further with the Irish Challenger League for Counter-Strike joining the team Ireland Esports Leagues family and two more preparing to join the network alongside ICL, COD Ireland and RL Ireland.

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Esports ecosystems don’t flourish in a single season. They require multi-year thinking, stable pathways, strong governance and consistent support. That’s how you create depth, not just the noise we see on a daily basis — but here’s the challenge we’re facing:

👉🏼 Schools work in academic years.

👉🏼 Universities operate on semester cycles.

👉🏼 Companies move quarter by quarter.

Each group has its own pressures, timelines, budgets and leadership changes. Not to mention the fact that esports is still an unknown quantity to most;

🗣️ “Are they really athletes though?”

🗣️ “Do we have students playing esports?”

🗣️ “I’m not sure anyone in our business is interested in esports”

Ireland Esports Leagues is designed as a long-term national structure that will grow stronger when institutions stay engaged across multiple years.

So our challenge is to bridge that gap — to make the long-term value clear enough, and accessible enough, that schools, universities and companies can confidently buy into something bigger than their immediate calendar.

The good news?

We’re making progress each month, the Premier Division going live, national esports community partnerships established, new strategic relationships established and more insights shared from the ongoing data we’re building all help demonstrate the long view.

The opportunity now is to keep building clarity, confidence, consistency and momentum — so Ireland’s esports ecosystem doesn’t just run season to season, but stands for years to come.

As we get closer to launching the Schools Series pilot and deepen our work with the Collegiate Advisory Committee, one thing would help us enormously:

Introductions to educators, school leaders and university administrators.

We’re now building an education programme that uses gaming to unlock digital skills, teamwork, problem-solving, communication, and STEAM development — but to tailor it properly, we need to understand the needs and experiences of educators.

If you know someone working in:

…we’d value an introduction.

This is how we ensure Ireland’s next generation benefits from what esports can teach — gaming for success.

The following metrics are for the period of 1-30 November 2025:

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

📅 w/c 15 December - Ireland Esports Collegiate Spring Series Registrations Open

📅 w/c 15 December - Office Showdown Spring Series Registrations Open

Regards,

Kurt & the Nativz Gaming Team