Over the past few weeks there’s been a couple of big changes at Riot UK, in terms of senior staff moving into different roles or departing.
A Riot spokesperson also told Esports News UK that all esports operations are now consolidated in Riot’s Berlin team now.
Mark Cox, UK country manager and Valorant EU publishing lead, has now taken on the European director of brand role.
Mark previously ran the UK and Nordic publishing business for Riot and while he has taken on a broader role, a Riot spokesperson told Esports News UK he will still be based out of Riot’s London office.
Another senior executive at Riot UK, Mo Fadl, has left the company to work as chief executive officer at new publisher Sandsoft Games. You can read more about Mo Fadl’s new role at Sandsoft and his goals on GamesIndustry.Biz.
Mo worked as head of UK esports at Riot Games and last year also took on the role of head of publishing for the nordics. In April this year, the NLC was announced, a league bringing together League of Legends esports teams from both the UK and the nordics.
It’s not clear whether Mark and Mo’s former roles will be filled by new staff or not, or if these positions will be changed or removed.
Several UK esports contacts said they have little to no contact with Riot now, and insted liaise more closely with DreamHack, the organisers of the UKLC and NLC.
A quick check on Riot’s careers pages shows there are four openings in the UK office – communications channel manager, influencer manager (UK and nordics), organised play manager (Europe) and senior brand manager (Valorant, Europe). Edit: It seems some of these positions have already been filled, with KaeyiDream on board as influencer manager.
In the Berlin office there are three openings: ERL (European Regional League), ERL (European Regional League) Manager and Influencer & Social Media Manager, Eastern Europe.
Esports New UK reached out to Riot’s PR channels and asked if there are new staff replacing Mark and Mo, who the main esports contacts will be at Riot UK moving forwards, and if it’s outsourcing most of its UK esports operations to DreamHack to run the UKLC and NLC.
We sent this out early last week and received a response on Friday, and were told that all esports ops are consolidated in the Berlin team now.
We’ll update this article if and when we hear back with any more info.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
