Dear Guild Member,

Welcome to the second edition of our newsletter, we’re already starting to kick things into gear. First and foremost, for those of you who are still eligible to compete in the Ireland Esports Collegiate Series, we have some great news!

We’re delighted to exclusively share with you first that our sign-ups for the 2024/25 series are opening soon, September 16th to be exact. We’ll reveal the full details over the next week.

As for the rest of this newsletter, we’re already starting to find our footing. You’ll find my interview with Jack Igoe of TikTok fame, breaking down his time in Irish esports and his thoughts on collegiate esports especially.

As always, keep an eye on alumni.irelandcollegiate.com. What? Heroic?

Industry News 🗞️

• PGL has acquired Esportal: PGL is one of the biggest tournament providers in the esports space that isn’t affiliated with EFG or an official games developer.

• G2 has extended its merchandise collection to include a new Batman collection: If you want to pick up some merch as a result of a crossover of G2 Esports and Batman, you can now. It’s a bit of a random crossover, but we’ll take it!

• Queen’s Univesity Belfast has opened a gaming cafe: If you live in Northern Ireland and want to play some games, QUB has opened up an all-new gaming cafe that you can play in, and I’ve played in it. Highly recommend!

Game on: Esports arrives at the Olympic Games

Gaming is undergoing a seismic change in mainstream media. Once considered a niche hobby, the industry has become too successful to ignore any longer.

The recently announced Olympic Esports Games are proof of just that. As the competition draws closer, the spotlight is now firmly fixed on competitive gaming, both here in Ireland and around the world.

I started covering the Irish esports scene for RTÉ back in 2017 when recognition was pretty scarce. The media were too focused on whether it should be called e-sport, eSports, or a combination of the two to cover events.

Yet grassroots communities continued to be the true pioneers of the scene, helping draw international competition to our shores for years. In the time since then, the Irish scene has well and truly exploded. Esports teams are found throughout the country, and festivals and tournaments give aspiring gamers experience on the main stage.

Now, we have esports athletes representing Ireland in international tournaments, sharing their stories on national airwaves. As the competitive scene continues to grow here, my hope is that media coverage will keep up with the momentum.

Earlier this August, I had the pleasure of covering the Olympic announcement for RTÉ. Hopefully, it is the first of many articles documenting the rise (and rise) of Irish esports. For the piece, I got to speak to stakeholders here and asked how prepared Ireland was for next year’s highly anticipated competition. 

Will we see the tricolour raised in Saudi Arabia come 2025? Click the link below to find out more.

Barry O’Rourke is an Irish journalist who covers the video games industry for RTÉ, Ireland’s Public Service Broadcaster.

Community Events 📅

Finding the various Irish esports communities across each of the different game titles isn’t easy, is it? As we continue to connect the dots of esports on the island we thought we’d help solve this problem.

First up, we’ve got a Call of Duty Ireland event on the 8th of September! It’s a kill race running from 7 PM until 9 PM in the all-new Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Players have to be in Ireland or from Ireland, but it’s free to enter and streamed on Twitch! Check it out.

Next up, we’ve got the Irish Challenger League’s Counter-Strike 2 tournament coming up. It’s an online qualifier hosted on September 28th and 29th, with the LAN finals taking place on October 26th. Check out their Discord to learn more.

If you want to learn more about other upcoming events, check out the links below.

Next Ireland Collegiate event and sign-ups ☘️

Launched last year in May, the Collegiate Challenge was conceived to give the top two ranked colleges/universities a chance to compete for the No. 1 title (background on the points system available here).

We’re happy to announce that we’re hosting the Ireland Esports Collegiate Challenge 2023/2024 in TUD’s Grangegorman campus on the 14th of September.

It’s a one-day event that will see teams and players compete in each of the titles we’ve offered across the year. Keep an eye on our Discord to learn more!

Thanks for reading.

Now share with your Irish esports friends.

- Adam