Scottish Esports Hub (SEH) has been awarded £5,000 of funding through Firstport’s Start It Award, in conjunction with the Social Entrepreneurs Fund and the Scottish Government.
The award, which is designed to support social entrepreneurs in Scotland, is the biggest step SEH has taken in its two-year journey to launch. With this funding, SEH says everything it’s planned for Scottish esports is ‘now within reach’.
Scottish Esports Hub is a not-for-profit social enterprise based around esports careers and wellbeing advice. It says its main social impacts are employability and young people.
The hub will launch in late spring with an esports careers advice service encompassing guides, careers talks and a schools programme which will be piloted in the second half of 2021.
With the funding, SEH will set itself up as a company with a constitution, contracts and value guidelines being written by SENScot Legal.
The value guidelines, which everyone associated with SEH will agree to through contracts, will have clauses around equality, toxicity, discrimination, disability awareness and how esports is written. SEH says it hopes this will be the first steps to regulating Scottish esports.
“This award is for Scottish esports and SEH will spend it accordingly to improve, support and grow Scottish esports for the better.”
Brian Houson, Scottish Esports Hub
The funding will also be used to pilot its schools programme in the second half of 2021, house SEH at The Glasgow Collective and raise awareness of SEH and Scottish esports through online marketing.
The award will also allow SEH to launch with two other departments focused on researching projects around Scottish esports and wellbeing and mental health within Scottish esports. These departments are SEH Research and SEH Wellbeing.
Brian Houston, founder of SEH, has plenty of experience in esports, having managed orgs like Perilous Gaming (see an old interview with Brian here), worked on the retail team at epic.LAN and held the role of operations manager at Esports Scotland.
“Having entered the esports industry in September 2015, and working nearly exclusively in grassroots esports, SEH is the cumulation of everything I’ve learned in esports from individuals, groups, organisations and companies over the years especially all my friends in Scottish esports,” Brian said.
“I cannot say how overwhelmed I am that SEH is one of the first esports projects The Scottish Government has funded. I don’t see this award as funding for SEH or myself though. This award is for Scottish esports and SEH will spend it accordingly to improve, support and grow Scottish esports for the better.”
There’s more info on the Scottish Esports Hub website.
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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.
