Hi {{first_name | there}},

After months of planning, building, and fine-tuning, the 8th Ireland Esports Collegiate Series and 2025/26 Company Series: Office Showdown both launched — bringing our ecosystem fully online under the Ireland Esports Leagues banner.

In the Collegiate Series, we’ve hit a new gear. The Premier Division is now live, building on the Open Division to create a true performance pathway. And as if that wasn’t enough, one lucky student earned a guaranteed place in last night’s Red Bull Tetris Ireland Finals through our exclusive Collegiate Series Leaderboard — a brilliant reward for competition excellence.

Meanwhile, the Company Series has kicked off its Winter season, with Dell joining the mix and deeper discovery underway to shape how internal company rollouts could look in 2026. It’s still early days, but we’re learning fast and seeing real potential for scale.

Beyond competition, we announced national community partnerships with COD Ireland and Rocket League Ireland, strengthening the grassroots foundations that make all of this possible. Behind the scenes, Nemesis received its next iteration to support the new season’s operations, and our education programme is stepping into focus as momentum for our Schools strategy builds.

If September was about graft, October was all about growth — and this is just the start.

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

🗞️ In Focus – This month’s In Focus explores how the collapse of the Esports Olympics and the success of League of Legends Worlds highlight two very different futures for global esports—and why our grassroots approach in Ireland might just be the way to go.

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

🚀 Premier Division officially launched this month, completing the evolution of the Collegiate Series structure and creating a clear varsity-style performance tier above the Open Division. It’s a major step forward giving teams a true national stage to perform on.

🚀 Collegiate Structure Strengthens on Campus - Our Student Rep network continues grow, we have three new esports societies confirmed for Spring and we’re seeing more collaboration between student leaders, staff and alumni than ever before.

🚀 Ireland Esports Leagues National Community Partnerships were confirmed in October with COD Ireland and Rocket League Ireland confirmed, connecting grassroots communities directly into the national leagues framework.

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Scaling a national ecosystem means scaling the people behind it.

With two of our three leagues now live — Collegiate and Company — the next challenge isn’t just competition delivery, it’s capacity building. To sustain growth, we need more trained hands, sharper systems and leadership depth that can match the ambition of Ireland Esports Leagues.

👥 Expanding the Leadership Team
We’ve started building the next layer of leadership across IEL — identifying individuals who can take ownership of community management and team engagement. This expansion isn’t just about filling roles; it’s about creating a structure that can scale sustainably as the ecosystem continues to grow.

🎮 Training for Game Delivery
From broadcast production to match administration, we’re developing a training programme to upskill our delivery teams across every title. The aim is to standardise quality, build consistency and develop a new wave of esports talent behind the camera as well as on screen. It’s a huge step toward making Ireland’s esports delivery self-sufficient and professional-grade.

⚙️ Maintaining Quality at Scale
The more moving parts we add, the greater the challenge in keeping standards high. But this is where maturity happens — refining how we deliver, communicate and lead so that the product improves even as the workload increases.

Growth brings pressure, but it’s the right kind of pressure. We’re building not just leagues — but the people and systems that will power them for years to come.

This month, our focus shifts from competition to capability — understanding how we can better connect esports with education, skills and future opportunity.

Both our Schools and Collegiate Advisory Committees have highlighted the same need: before we can grow, we need to benchmark the level of understanding across our education network. That means gauging where esports currently sits within Ireland’s post-primary schools, colleges and universities — how administrators, teachers and support staff perceive it, also how prepared they are to integrate it into their educational environments if they’ve started thinking this far.

🎓 Benchmarking Knowledge and Opportunity
We’re now preparing to survey educators and administrators nationwide to build a clear picture of esports awareness, confidence and perceived barriers. This will help us identify where the real potential lies — not just for play, but for STEM engagement, digital innovation and applied learning.

💡 From Insight to Implementation
The findings will directly shape our Education Programme, which will incorporate the Ireland Esports Leagues’ competition framework as a practical foundation for learning.

🚀 Building the Next Generation of Digital Talent
This is about more than gaming. It’s about using the power of play to unlock curiosity and capability in areas that matter — from coding to communication, from leadership to learning. By embedding esports within the broader conversation around STEM, employability, and innovation, we can help prepare students for the opportunities that will define the next decade.

If you’re an educator or institution interested in contributing to this benchmark, or exploring how esports can enhance your learning pathways, we’d love to connect.

METRICS

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

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

📅 6 Oct - 28 Nov - Collegiate Series Winter Tournament underway

📅 20 Oct - 27 Nov - Company Series: Office Showdown Winter Tournament

📅 1 - 5 Dec - Collegiate Series Winter Finals Week

Regards,

Kurt & the Nativz Gaming Team