Update: The Newcastle event did not go ahead in the end due to a sponsor pulling out, resulting in no prize pool. However, there was some controversy. Esports News UK understands the ACCL took team payments and also paid out for venue fees without having the sponsor fully locked in.
This apparently resulted in the ACCL being around £4,000 in debt. They struggled to pay people back for their team passes and received negative feedback on socials. The ACCL account on Twitter has now gone dark.
Original article: ACCL, organisers of the UK’s first Call of Duty (CoD) LAN since the pandemic, are in the process of arranging their next event at Newcastle United football stadium St James’ Park.
Joe ‘Prezzy’ Preston, co-owner of the ACCL, recently announced on Twitter: “Right, we can make St James’ Park work. It’ll cost us a fortune, but it’s happening. I can’t believe I’m even saying it, but we are going to be hosting an event at the football stadium I’ve been in awe of since my first visit in 1999.”
He said the venue could host around 1,500 spectators, making it the biggest CoD LAN in Europe, and now the ACCL are currently looking for sponsors to help get it sorted. The event has since been announced to take place on July 16th and 17th 2022.
On May 22nd 2022, organisers said ticket sales for ACCL Newcastle have been put on hold due to someone trying to sabotage the payments system.
St James’ Park is of course home to English Premier League club Newcastle United, which was sold to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund late last year – the same government fund that purchased ESL and Faceit earlier this year.
Newcastle is also no stranger to esports. The Newcastle United Foundation also recently unveiled its esports room in the newly-opened ‘Nucastle’ community hub a few months ago.
Katana win as ACCL Sheffield CoD LAN suffers setbacks: ‘The EU Call of Duty scene needs events and I applaud them for taking the risk and persevering through the problems’
The Newcastle news comes after ACCL faced some difficulties at their recent CoD LAN in Sheffield, the VibePay Spring Invitational, which took place at Lava Esports centre on May 7th and 8th 2022.
Prezzy was very open and transparent about the online, server and networking issues on his Twitter page, and did his best to keep participants and the community up to date.
The tournament ended up being finished online, with Irish org Katana Gaming beating Team Ricochet in the grand final.
Katana Gaming CEO and founder Heffy had these words to say:
As Esports News UK was not in attendance at the physical event, we reached out to Heffy, who kindly supplied this info for us.
“The event did not go smoothly, but in my opinion this was to be expected for the first event ACCL have hosted,” Heffy said. “I applaud them for taking the risk and also persevering through the technical problems. Events like these are what the EU Call of Duty scene needs, and I think any org worth their salt realises that.
“On day one, the venue was hit with an IP Ban in the morning because everyone logged onto BattleNet at the same time and the venue only had a static IP. Following on from this there were server and network issues which meant hardly any games were played at all. Only one of our teams got a game on day one, which they were called back into the venue for at 1am on Sunday.
“On day two, luckily, thanks to a player who was attending the event, the server issues were resolved and the organisers were able to get through the games. Best of fives were reduced to best of threes in order to get through games faster. We were there from 8.30am Sunday morning til about 3am on Monday.
“The organisers, with 10 games left to play, called it a night as people were becoming fatigued/unwell and also had to travel on the Monday.”
The rest of the tournament will be played out online.
Katana’s academy side Pyro had their first LAN event, starting at 22nd seed and knocked out a team of experience players into the lower bracket, and also knocked out sixth seed and Scottish esports organisation Skelp.
The main team, Katana Gaming, are still in the event and haven’t dropped a map yet.
Heffy continued:
“I think the ACCL’s next event will be bigger and better. It was great to meet up with so many people in the Katana Gaming community and the broader community. COVID-19 restrictions over the last two years have been hard on people, and I think everyone appreciated meeting up with friends, which brought about positive vibes regardless of the problems at the event.”
Heffy, Katana Gaming
Prezzy explained in a Twitlonger: “I took a massive risk when I decided to be the first to bring LAN back to the UK, on a game that has no LAN function and has been littered with issues all year long. Not only that, but we did it in front of a big audience, many of whom were there in person to look me in the eyes when things were going wrong.
“We can beat ourselves up about what happened, but it’s done. Nothing I can do now will change what happened at the weekend. The only thing I can change, is how we do better for the scene by bouncing back and making a statement.
“I do not settle for mediocracy. I want to be the best, work with the best and to provide the best so that you can achieve what you want to achieve from this industry. I will not stop until EU gets the attention, recognition and opportunities that so many involved deserve.
“Sheffield had all the ingredients to be amazing. For the most part, it was still class, meeting so many incredible people and bringing the community together in one place for a shared passion. It’s time to go again. This time, failure is not an option.”
The ACCL have also announced a new management team and staff team.
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.
