EXCEL Esports Are Blazing The Trail For British Gaming

EXCEL Esports is a familiar brand in the British gaming scene; as comforting as a mug of hot chocolate on a winter afternoon while the fire blazes in the background. But what if I told you the teacup was about to be thrown into the flames, and replaced with a hi-tech energy drink, and the biting icy breeze transformed dramatically to a balmy summer heat? Quite the change, no? Well that’s pretty much what EXCEL have done - cast aside the old and brought in the new. And that goes for everything from their new logo, to their refreshed brand ideals and strategies. It’s a whole new world for excel esports - won’t you join them?

EXCEL is entering a new phase of their journey. Since their inception in a uni dorm in 2014 of co-founder and Chief Gaming Office Kieran Holmes-Darby and his brother Joel, they’ve gone from strength to strength to solidify their message of achieving goals, improvement, and positive mental health action.

EXCEL’s new message is one of empowerment - not just for their players and teams - but for the fans. For you.

We talked to Kieran Holmes-Darby about the brand refresh, the goals EXCEL have for 2021, and changing the face of British esports.

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The UK has a long history of storied esports organisations, from London Spitfire in the Overwatch League to Fnatic, the heart of British esports runs deep within the communities they inhabit.

EXCEL are no different.

At EXCEL’s brand update press event, they made a few things very clear.

Firstly, their journey to get here was very grassroots. A conversation between Kieran and Joel in popular UK chain pub Wetherspoons about how the UK esports industry was missing a team doing things “the right way”, a passion project took off – and moved quickly.

Only a year after inception, in 2015, EXCEL generated momentum quickly in console-based games such as Call of Duty, Gears of War, and Halo. As Kieran himself stated, “there was a lower barrier to entry at that point in esports”, but nevertheless, the teams went from amateurs, to semi-pros, to pros, in record time,

Last year was life-changing for EXCEL, and for Kieran. They were accepted in the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) and had their first taste of tier one esports.

Now, in 2020, with a larger and seriously experienced staff fit for their big ambitions, and an impressive Fortnite signing in the form of Jaden “Wolfiez” Ashman, the sky is the limit for EXCEL and their aspirations.

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Secondly, their brand refresh is just that – a refresh, not a rebrand. CEO Wouter Sleijffers made a point of explaining how they went “deep into thought about their future”, their own mission, self-belief, and their capabilities when structuring their brand refresh. This is encompassed in not only their new logo and stylings, but their new mission statement – The Power Of Better.

As Head of Marketing Milly Preston put it, “the Power of Better vision is anchored on to core principles” – the idea around improvement never stops, and always striving to be better, whether on an individual or team or brand or org level. Another facet was EXCEL forging their own path - not doing things the same way everyone else has and challenging the status quo.

These ideals and principles have never NOT been part of EXCEL’s vision, and as Kieran puts it; “it’s not as much as “what’s everyone doing and let’s just do it differently for the sake of it” – It’s just us finding our way and our blueprint in the industry, because we don’t necessarily think it’s been cracked by anyone yet. I don’t think anyone is doing anything horribly wrong, BUT everyone is chasing each other’s tails a little bit.

“There are some really good things that some of our competitors are doing that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel with, we can just “copy and paste” some stuff, but there’s a lot of areas we feel haven’t been explored to their fullest potential, and we want to think on our own feet and do those in our unique way.”

The logo is possibly the only “brand new” thing in EXCEL’s refresh, as the simplistic design catches the eye, embodies dynamic momentum, and as Robin McCammon puts it, “can evolve and improve”. The new logo comes with a diverse and flexible colour palette, allowing for creativity over everything from platform design to merch.

Thirdly, the focus for EXCEL is now, more than ever, on improvement. Not only for them as a brand, but for their players, their teams, and their fans and community. This commitment to empowerment is their manifesto, and the launch of the “Gaming For Better” whitepaper series aims to do just that. The first one, published today, and created by EXCEL’s Head of Performance and sports psychology expert Fabian Broich, explores the common injuries experienced by gamers and provides advice on how to improve individual performance and become healthier by focusing on physical activity, lifestyle balance, and creating positive habits. 

Kieran expanded on this in terms of his players health and habits, saying “burnout’s a real thing. What I don’t think people respect is, given how our industry is developing and how professionalised the top tier esports has become – there’s a lot of money on the line and a lot of pressure on these guys to perform constantly at a high level over a very extended period  of time – that’s a serious strain on your body and your mind, it’s serious stuff and it needs to be taken seriously. That’s where we are attempting to come up with ways to support our players so that they can consistently compete without getting that burnout – basically being able to prolong their careers.”

In a world where many players are “retired” at 25, Kieran is pushing that idea away for his teams, and their futures.

“At the moment, careers are not being prolonged and we don’t think there is any scientific reason for that – i.e. lack of reaction time or whatever, we think it’s poor management. We don’t want that to be us.”

Gaming For Better is of course not just about the players themselves, it's an overarching idea that blends into the gaming community at large. When asked what that means for esports fans, and how they would utilise the tools given to them by EXCEL to improve their lives, Kieran was adamant that empowerment was the main goal, saying “one thing we’ve noticed with our players, is when we bring in younger talents who have exploded on to the scene, we see they just don’t have a lot of understanding of a lot of outside of game things such as their body. We have a duty of care to those players to educate them on what’s good for their body, how to be the best versions of themselves, how to be good well-rounded human beings – we take that duty of care on with those young players.

“I think that really speaks to our community as well, I think we play a role as a brand to empower our community to be better versions of themselves. I think that’s always been the goal, we’ve just never really clearly articulated that and we’re starting to do that now.”

The Gaming For Better – is to give our community the education and the tools to be better people. Healthier, more positive, more driven, whatever they want to be good at – we want to empower them.

2020’s effects

EXCEL’s vision did not stagnate in 2020. Wondering if the goal posts had changed due to the global pandemic and how that has affected many businesses and brands, Kieran surprised us with his answer, stating that that “some people see the increased amount of participation in gaming and the increased amount of viewership generally on esports titles, and that the pandemic has kind of been only “good” for the industry – which is quite a weird thing to say”, but does reflect on the negative impact it has had on, for instance, esports broadcasting, stating how using “much more professionalised and TV studios essentially to produce high quality broadcasts isn’t as possible during the global pandemic.”

Working from home is something many people across the world have had to come to terms with, but moving an entire operation to peoples home offices is quite another thing entirely. For Kieran and EXCEL, however, they were “very well set-up to work in a remote world, and we were able to flip the switch in the esports industry and in our company very very quickly, and have everyone up and running and working from home in a safe environment.”

In terms of the goal posts changing due to COVID-19? “Not at all. To be honest, it hasn’t changed anything for us in terms of business plan or aspirations or ambitions.”

It’s About The People

People, whether that be players or fans, are the two most important parts of a gaming and esports community. Kieran knows this all too well, and when asked about EXCEL’s vision of “challenging the status quo”, talked a little about performance structure, especially how EXCEL work with individuals.

“There’s a lot of talk in our industry about traditional sports and how we can utilise what they do – I don’t think anyone has cracked taking the bits that are relevant from traditional sports and entertainment sectors and creating a structure around our player and our teams that allows them to be the bet possible versions of themselves – both in game (i.e. competing at the highest level) but also people outside of the game.

“So, building up whatever skill sets that they don’t currently possess. I don’t think anyone’s nailed that yet and I think we are the closest to nailing that with our holistic approach to developing our players and talents.”

Kieran also points out that when it comes to the community, and in particular being community-led, “in other industries, people have understood that it’s “consumer first”, it’s about “the customer is always right”, Steve Jobs didn’t necessarily believe the customer was always right with Apple, but he certainly understood the product was all about the consumer – and I just don’t think we do that in the gaming and esports industry and I don’t really know why.”

“I think what I want XL to do better is being very community-led, I think we need to be led by the people that support us – ultimately that’s the way we’re going to grow and add value to it. Without giving specific examples, we’re going to be listening to our community a lot more, whether that be products, platforms, whatever it may be, we’re going to be led by them.”

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Something that will certainly bolster this idea of community for and within EXCEL is their upcoming “true gamer” ambassador, who will fit in with EXCEL’s branding by “authentically speaking to our audience. I think that’s going to be a pretty seamless transition.”

But how about plans to expand signings? Kieran confirmed that, in terms of their LEC team and players Marc Robert "Caedrel" Lamont  and Joran "Special" Scheffer's recent exits, “there will be new faces in those positions -  watch this space.”

Kieran goes on to talk about their other big title, Fortnite, and explains that “as for Fortnite signings, obviously there are always conversations and talk about “do we need to expand” etc. Obviously, we’re very happy with Wolfiez and we don’t feel like we need another Fortnite player at this point to talk to the community. It doesn’t rule us out ever bringing someone else on board. His two closest teammates over the past years, one has signed with Fnatic, and one with G2, so there could be some interesting collaborations with those teams as opposed to picking up another player ourselves.”

2021 seems like as good a time as any to make plans for the future for EXCEL, but do those include breaking into new titles within esports?

Kieran “can think of three titles we’ve been very close to expanding into, but haven’t hit the ‘GO’ button due to a variety of reasons. We have a way of assessing game titles that I don’t think anyone else has, and it’s quite data-driven, and we then build business models off the back of that to try to land somewhere comfortable, and we didn’t quite there on three occasions. But, we’ll continue to look, and I feel like we’ll get there in 2021.”
 

2021 is surely going to be the biggest year yet for EXCEL, and we can’t wait to go on this journey with them.
 

Images via EXCEL Esports