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BLAST & Solihull Council announces major esports event to take place in the UK next year
Solihull Council is pleased to announce a major esports event taking place in Solihull from 27 to 30 March 2025 at bp pulse LIVE.
The 2025 Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) Season will host its first arena event of the year in Solihull, with thousands of fans expected to attend.
Esports (or electronic sports) is a term used to describe competitive video gaming. It’s different from standard video gaming in that esports is competitive (player-vs-player) and usually has an engaging spectator element to it, like traditional sports. Rocket League is a sport-based video game (also known as football with rocket-powered cars that fly!).
The event – RLCS Major 1 Birmingham – will have national and international significance, welcoming some of the world’s best Rocket League players to Solihull and the wider region. 16 teams from around the world will compete for the first trophy of the RLCS 2025 Season in front of a live audience on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 March. Tickets will go on sale via Live Nation from next week.
A few weeks before the main event, members of the public will be invited to take part in an action-packed tournament, the ‘British Esports Cup’ featuring Rocket League. The British Cup tournament, led by the British Esports Federation, will be open to all UK residents aged 13+ and offer a prize pool of £5,000.
A business esports summit (WM Esports Unwrapped) is also planned for the event weekend, which will be a chance for key business and industry leaders to network and identify future growth opportunities.
Councillor Ian Courts, Leader of Solihull Council and Lead Member for Business and the Economy commented: “Esports may be a new concept for many of us, but it’s fast becoming an industry of huge economic significance. We are absolutely thrilled to welcome the RLCS Major 1 Birmingham to our borough, in partnership with the British Esports Federation and BLAST.
“It is expected to attract thousands of fans from across the world to the arena, with millions more watching the global broadcast online. The economic benefit to the hospitality and visitor economy in the region is unrivalled with the majority of fans expected to attend the event from out of the area.
“The event will put our borough on the world stage and promote Solihull, the West Midlands and the NEC event campus as a national and international hub for gaming and esports championships.”
Chester King, President of British Esports said: “Hosting the RLCS Major 1 in Birmingham is a landmark moment for UK esports, and we’re thrilled to see another world-class event hosted in Great Britain.
“British Esports is proud to support the UK esports scene with our own Rocket League tournament running alongside the Major, providing a platform for aspiring players across the UK to showcase their talent. This collaboration underlines the strength of the UK’s esports ecosystem and British Esports’ ongoing commitment to creating opportunities for grassroots players to engage with professional esports athletes.”
People visiting the borough for the event are encouraged to check out the Visit Solihull website for information on where to eat, drink and stay in the borough.
The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) and the UK Government is supporting the organisers of the event with funding from the Commonwealth Games Legacy Fund. This is being used to boost trade and tourism sectors and bring vital footfall to local businesses in the region.
Solihull Council is working in partnership with BLAST, British Esports Federation, NEC Group, West Midlands Growth Company and the University of Warwick.
In 2023, the UK was placed fifth in the world for esports revenue generation. Esports is growing at a rate of 13.8% a year. The video game market is worth an estimated $282 billion and there are approximately 3 billion active gamers worldwide.
The post BLAST & Solihull Council announces major esports event to take place in the UK next year appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.
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Consolidating brands efficiently to achieve high growth
Tom Walton, Director at technology consultancy, Burendo, shares how operators can achieve sustainable profitability with learnings from other sectors
Operators who are merging and acquiring other businesses, launching new products or even integrating third-party technologies, can find themselves navigating complex internal processes. It is a complex large-scale challenge. Where M&As are commonplace, brand consolidation can be critical when securing sustainable profitability while planning for higher returns in the future. Within the emerging LatAm and US markets, acquisition remains a key focus. A common issue, regardless of geography, is the challenges presented by outdated or fragmented platforms and systems, a major obstacle in the growth trajectory.
In many cases, fundamental changes in how the organisation functions: its people, processes and technology holds the key to better value, higher profits, operational efficiency and reduced risk. By addressing these complexities with proven experience, technology consultants can support operators to be successful in their strategic initiatives.
Agility in competitive markets
To remain competitive in an ever-changing market, operators must move fast and with agility to refine their offering. A constant eye on retention, acquisition and regulatory changes is paramount to avoid financial impact. Despite this risk, research conducted by Accenture in 2022 found that 95% of B2B and B2C C-level executives believe their customers are changing faster than they can change their business, indicating most operators risk falling behind. This poses the question of how this can be supported.
The value of technology consultancies is in enabling businesses to extract greater value from existing resources through a confident understanding of what good looks like. Bringing external ideas gathered through experience, exemplary resources from process to people, can demonstrate what good looks like. More importantly, it shortens the timeline to achieving real goals in the organisation. Being under resourced or lacking the skills needed across these challenges makes it difficult to gain an overarching perspective particularly within a siloed approach.
At Burendo, we leverage more than 40 years of cross-sector experience. We are not only working with some of the biggest operators in betting and gaming, but partner with other highly regulated industries including finance and healthcare. We have helped operators across many initiatives which includes accelerating project delivery by 97% on average. We pride ourselves in ensuring we leave a lasting positive impact on the culture, enabling our partners to be empowered to carry on our work.
The retention battle
Many operators are too busy with day-to-day tasks or overwhelmed with where to start when it comes to transformation and building a cutting-edge user experience. An example of the gap between capacity and demand is the rising popularity of in-play betting. During live sports, the speed in which players can find and place their bet is critical. Here, streamlined processes that allow for quick innovation will correlate with customer satisfaction, resulting in higher retention rates.
A fresh perspective for lasting change
A successful approach to optimisation requires taking the challenge and viewing it from an experienced and innovative angle. Our partners truly benefit from best practice and valuable lessons derived from other sectors. Through experience we have found that these challenges are not exclusive to betting & gaming and so the ability to apply these learnings drive success.
Managing complex systems and large volumes of data is a common obstacle. By applying these cross-sector principles through working with technology consultants, operators can gain valuable insight into re-engineering platforms and the skills needed, to meet both current and future demands.
Building exceptional, scalable and adaptable architectures ensures that businesses can continue to grow and evolve as the industry changes. This forward-thinking approach positions operators ahead of the curve, meaning they are poised for success in the years to come and have the agility to address any challenges or opportunities that arise.
Creating lasting change requires more than just solving immediate problems. Our goal for our clients is to maintain high levels of efficiency long after an initial transformation is complete. By empowering teams to implement and sustain improvements, operators can maintain continuous growth and unlock growth worth tens of millions of pounds, far outweighing their cost of delivery.
The focus must now shift to building stronger, more Agile organisations that can adapt to changing market conditions. Sustainable efficiency enables operators to optimise time-to-market, improve platform performance, and manage resources more effectively, creating a foundation for long-term growth.
About Burendo
Founded in 2018 and with offices in Leeds and London, Burendo is an award-winning, consultancy delivering stand-out products and services through technology. We partner with organisations to accelerate organisational value delivery and transform customer experiences.
We are pragmatic thinkers and doers who understand the operational world of organisations and customer demands. We work as a partner to give our clients the latest ideas, tools and techniques to deliver effective results that build long-term value.
For more information, you can visit the Burendo website: www.burendo.com
If you have any questions, please contact Kate Smith, Senior Digital Marketing Executive by email: [email protected]
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Kambi Group plc repurchase of shares during 27 December 2024 – 7 January 2025
Kambi Group plc (“Kambi”) has during the period 27 December 2024 to 7 January 2025 (the “Buyback Period”) repurchased a total of 50,000 ordinary shares (ISIN: MT0000780107) as part of the share buyback programme, within the mandate approved at the Extraordinary General Meeting on 20 June 2024 (the “Programme”).
The objective of the Programme is to achieve added value for Kambi´s shareholders and to give the Board increased flexibility with Kambi´s capital structure by reducing the capital. The Programme is being carried out in accordance with the Maltese Companies Act, EU Market Abuse Regulation No 596/2014 (“MAR”) and other applicable rules.
During the Buyback Period, Kambi repurchased a total of 50,000 ordinary shares at a volume-weighted average price of 103.38 SEK. From the beginning of the Programme, which started on 6 November 2024, until and including 7 January 2025, Kambi has repurchased a total of 394,000 ordinary shares at a volume-weighted average price of 104.74 SEK per share.
All acquisitions have been carried out on Nasdaq First North Growth Market in Stockholm by Carnegie Investment Bank AB on behalf of Kambi. Following the acquisitions and as of 7 January 2025, Kambi’s holding of its own shares amounted to 394,000 and the total number of issued shares in Kambi is 29,903,619 ordinary shares. Under the Programme Kambi is authorised to repurchase a maximum of 3,127,830 ordinary shares, up to a maximum amount of €12.0 million.
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GAMSTOP Announces Record Registration Numbers as It Introduces New 5-Year Auto-Renewal Exclusion Option
GAMSTOP, the national self-exclusion scheme for online gambling, has announced record registration numbers for the start of the year.
In the biggest daily figures since its inception in 2018, GAMSTOP saw 415 people signing up on January 1st, followed by 413 new registrants on January 2nd and 396 on the 6th – the 3 highest daily registration figures since May 2023.
In a continued effort to support vulnerable consumers, GAMSTOP has introduced a new ‘5 years with auto-renewal’ option, for vulnerable consumers looking to extend their exclusion from gambling websites and apps. The new 5 -year auto-renewal exclusion was developed in direct response to feedback from users.
More than half a million people have signed up for GAMSTOP’s services in the years following its launch, with many expressing a desire for longer-term exclusion options. Independent evaluation of the service by Ipsos found that some users are nervous about what happens when they come to the end of their exclusion period and others would have opted for a “lifetime” ban if it had been available.
Currently, at the end of a consumer’s self-exclusion period, the exclusion remains active for up to a further seven years unless they contact GAMSTOP to ask for it to be removed.
Under the new option, consumers who select 5-years with auto-renewal will have their exclusion automatically renewed for an additional 5-year period once the initial term expires. This cycle will continue, providing an ongoing safeguard against gambling participation unless the consumer actively chooses to opt-out of the auto-renewal feature.
For consumers who have opted in to receive emails, GAMSTOP will also begin sending email reminders to those with 5-year exclusions (with or without auto-renewal) every 15 months, helping them stay informed about their upcoming expiration and renewal dates.
The 5-year auto-renewal exclusion option is now available alongside GAMSTOP’s existing 6-month, 1-year, and 5-year exclusion periods. Consumers with a current 5- year exclusion will be able to upgrade it by turning on auto-renewal within their account.
Gamstop Group CEO, Fiona Palmer said:
“We have come a very long way since our launch in April 2018, but our journey doesn’t stop there.
Our goal is to provide consumers with tools and options that empower them to take control of their gambling activity. As such, we’re consistently listening to feedback and evaluating the effectiveness of our service.
Consumers wanted longer exclusion periods and we listened. The introduction of the 5-year auto-renewal exclusion is an important step in ensuring consumers peace of mind when using our service and helping vulnerable consumers take a sustained break from their gambling.”
The post GAMSTOP Announces Record Registration Numbers as It Introduces New 5-Year Auto-Renewal Exclusion Option appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.
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