British Esports at Yorkshire Games Festival 2020: Recap, Rocket League winners and videos

Dominic Sacco

3 min read | 12 Feb 2020

The British Esports Association attended the Yorkshire Games Festival at the National Media and Science Museum from February 5th to 9th, hosting talks on esports as well as a Rocket League tournament. Here’s a look back on what happened including interviews with the winning teams.

First up, on the Wednesday, British Esports’ Rocket League game adviser and former team manager for Renault Sport Team Vitality, Mike ‘Gregan’ Ellis, hosted a ‘world of esports’ talk about the in-depth roles in competitive gaming.

He got the crowd fired up with an exciting example of Rocket League esports matches and provided deep insight into working in esports.

Then, on the Thursday, Excel Esports co-founder and chief gaming officer Kieran Holmes-Darby spoke about his journey with the UK esports organisation Excel.

Specifically, Kieran explained how they went from grassroots start-up to big organisation participating in the top tier of European League of Legends – the LEC.

Thank you to @British_Esports for inviting me down to the Yorkshire Games Festival #YGF20 to give a keynote on all things esports!

(Apologies for the quality of the photo, waiting for the auditorium to fill up!) pic.twitter.com/0oPLftfiTM

— Kieran Holmes-Darby (@KieranHDarby) February 6, 2020

On the weekend, the Family Fun Day took place from 10.30am to 4.40pm.

The British Esports Association hosted drop-in and drop-out sessions on Rocket League, giving guests a chance to cast (commentate) over matches and play some too, with the action broadcast on the cinema screen.

Nathan Badger helped cast the matches on Saturday, while James Broughton and British Esports school and college liaison officer Elliot Bond helped on the Sunday.

British Esports’ other school and college liaison officer Alice Leaman helped organise the event and marketing manager Morgan Ashurst also helped with the activities and produce videos.

Each day we hosted a tournament, with some prizes up for grabs including special British Esports winner shirts.

Team Purple (pictured below) won the tournament on the Saturday, while Reapers Rebellion (pictured top) emerged victorious on the Sunday.

Videos

Check out our recap of the Yorkshire Games Festival here:

And our interview with the winners on Saturday – Team Purple:

Finally, we’d like to say a big thank you to our volunteers that helped with the event: 

Nathan Badger, Jordan Stephens, James Broughton, Mark Garratt, Saliha Rafiq and Obediah Ayton.