UK esports organisation Team Norse Thunder are in the running for an award in a UK-wide business competition.
The org are up for the StartUp Awards’ Social Enterprise Award, a category that recognises “new businesses that give back, enrich communities, and make a contribution to wider society”.
The StartUp Awards consists of multiple regions, including London, the South West, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and more.
More than 2,500 nominations have been made in the awards, each celebrating the work a recent start-up is doing in their field, and Team Norse Thunder is one of three Midlands-based social enterprises to make the final cut.
Team Norse Thunder are in the Midlands’ Social StartUp variant of the 2022 awards, and will be going up against Chronically Brown, an entity dedicated to empowering South Asians with invisible and visible disabilities, and ZeroSmart, a start-up designed to help people reduce their carbon footprint.
Team Norse Thunder are a social enterprise esports org supporting vulnerable young people across the city of Birmingham, to combat social isolation and loneliness. Their esports teams compete in local, national and international events, and their education academy supports students who need to re-sit their maths and English qualifications alongside esports industry work experience.
“This is a brilliant honour for us. We’ve set out to help people – and to see people notice what we’re doing is really exciting. Its fingers crossed for the final now.”
Dave Scotford, Team Norse Thunder
They also have a physical venue which helps give people struggling with loneliness a chance to come together, make friends while playing games and having fun. Team Norse Thunder recently partnered with The Strive Group to offer a traineeship course.
The free six-week program will support students through ‘maths and English qualifications and intensive career planning, all while providing hands-on work experience in the esports industry’.
The winner of the StartUp Award will be announced on July 16th 2022 at a ceremony in Birmingham city centre.
Team Norse Thunder director Dave Scotford said: “The pandemic was rough on a lot of people, and we really recognised that we needed to find a way to bring people together. When we think about loneliness we often think about older generations of people, but it affects everyone.
“Seeing people come together over the last few years to play games and build up a friendship network with people across the city, with people they ordinary would never have met… that has been amazing to see. A real mix of online and in-person play has helped us reach more and more people.
“This is a brilliant honour for us. We’ve set out to help people – and to see people notice what we’re doing is really exciting. Its fingers crossed for the final now.”
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.
