Guild Esports makes education move after posting a loss in its first full year of operations, wants to be ‘the largest provider of school-based learning for esports through 2022’

Guild Esports, the UK-based esports organisation linked with David Beckham, has outlined some new education-based plans in a new financial report published this morning.

The company generated revenues of £1.9m during its first full financial year (from October 1st 2020 to September 30th 2021), but posted a loss before tax of £8.8m (up from £2.7m made the year prior).

Guild’s non-executive chairman Derek Lew said the loss “reflects a major investment in operational infrastructure, esports teams, the Guild Academy, content creation and the development of Guild merchandising”, an investment that he says is “fundamental to Guild’s business model and long-term strategy”.

The Guild Academy first launched last year inspired by football academies, helping gamers aged 11 and above to improve skills.

Guild says the academy had more than 3,000 sign-ups at launch, and that its tournaments have been successful, including the final Apex Legends tournament of 2021,which was “oversubscribed days before it started”.

For 2022, Guild says it wants to grow the academy in two areas. Firstly, providing ‘added value’ to the casual gamer, and helping aspiring pros through a player development system, as well as delivering workshops from streamers and pro players.

“The second element is with schools and colleges,” Guild said in its financial report, “where we are seeing strong appetite for esports engagement resulting in partnering with five colleges in January 2022.

“Guild aims to be the largest provider of school-based learning for esports through 2022.”

Esports education has increased in prominence in recent years, from scholarships in the States to esports degrees in the UK, like Staffordshire University’s. And an Esports BTEC Level 3 qualification is currently approved to be delivered in 199 schools and colleges across the UK, through a partnership between Pearson and the British Esports Association.

Ukie runs esports and gaming initiatives in schools via its Digital Schoolhouse program, and other degree courses have launched over the past year or so, like Esports Production at the Confetti Institute and the University of Portsmouth’s first esports coaching and performance degree.

Guild hasn’t revealed which colleges it has partnered with yet or what those partnerships will involve, see expect a separate announcement on those soon.

Elsewhere in today’s financial report, Guild says it’s considering expansion into new games and markets, that Guild teams contributed £720,000 in prize money wins to revenues (before players’ share of winnings) and that staff numbers have risen from a handful to more than 35 full-time staff.

In terms of numbers, Guild’s fans exceeded 1.1m in 2021, with video views of 38.5m and social impressions of almost 500m. Guild’s network audience of players and content creators currently stands at 14.6m, not including David Beckham’s followers.

Beckham is a co-owner of Guild and also received around £15.25m from the company as part of a five-year image rights deal. Guild says it is ‘on track to double’ its network audience this year.

Guild also spoke about its sponsorship deals with HyperX, Subway and Samsung in the report.

Guild Esports was first announced in summer 2020 and Guild floated on the London Stock Exchange in October 2020. Its share price is currently at a record low, sitting just below 3p.

In June 2021, Guild announced it made a pre-tax loss of £4.28m and revenues of £0.37m for its half-year financial period, and said it was the world’s fastest-growing esports organisation.

Earlier this month, Guild Esports announced its biggest ever sponsorship deal worth £4.5m with Bitstamp and Guild revealed more info on its new headquarters, academy and merch shop in London.

Dom Sacco

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.