The founder of a UK esports organisation is helping to fund esports team rosters that aren’t currently representing an organisation, who might not have the money to attend LAN events.
Feenix Esports founder Alastair ‘McNoob’ Whitham has set up a Feenix event sponsorship to help org-less teams from a range of games attend events. The most recent is Insomnia, which kicks off in April 2022 at the Birmingham NEC, but the fund is not exclusive to that.
The Insomnia68 esports tournaments and prize pools were recently announced, with competitions in League of Legends, CSGO, Overwatch and Valorant taking place.
But some esports teams and organisations have complained on Twitter about higher ticket prices at Insomnia68, and not all are able to attend events like this due to ticket, travel and accomodation costs.
Alastair has set up his fund to help them, and explained his decision below. He’ll be helping teams including Fambit and Keto’s CSGO roster to attend, and also yours truly, Esports News UK, to help us cover the event.
The fund is designed to help teams attend different events and take part in tournaments in a mix of games – it’s not limited to CSGO and Insomnia.
Feenix Esports added in another tweet: “For many UK and Ireland players and organisations, it is cheaper to travel to a European event rather than a UK one, and the organisers don’t make a lot of profit, if any. Our system needs more support.
“In the future, this [fund] will not be limited to a specific game or event. Insomnia is a particularly expensive event, however. A more official application based on meritocracy, personality, longevity and other factors will be introduced at a later date,” Feenix added.
Alastair also said: “Had some questions about this. I want nothing from a team, no branding, no prize money nothing. Treat it like a donation rather than a real sponsorship. In the future, it may not be only CSGO.”
Players and teams responded positively to Alastair’s offer.
Fambit’s coach Ciarán King said: “We are very grateful for @FnxMcnoob showing us this tremendous amount of generosity, his only ask was for us to pay this kindness forwards when we can. We will, thank you.”
Endpoint UK CSGO player MiGHTYMAX commented: “Don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this. Incredibly kind gesture.”
The fund is reminiscent of UK Overwatch player and former StarCraft player Boombox, who put his own money into the epic.LAN StarCraft II tournament prize pool a few years ago.
Alastair also offered to double the prize money to winning teams at the recent epic.LAN, epic35, and Feenix funded an Overwatch tournament a few years ago.
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.
