On Thursday February 16th 2023, the first Fourth Wall event took place at Staffordshire University London, with the new UK esports organisation’s League of Legends team playing an NLC Division 2 match live. With a caster desk, full stream broadcast & audience watching the action, here’s how it went down, according to Dom Sacco.
Walking into the Staffordshire University London facilities at Here East was a welcome and long-awaited moment, as it’s been a very long time since we had a UK League of Legends esports event like this.
It’s also a first for a team to play their Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC, regional league for the UK/Ireland/Nordics/Malta) match live from a venue in this way, instead of remotely. And though they won’t be there every time, Fourth Wall are planning to host two events each week (Thursday and Sunday) to broadcast their NLC Division 2 matches to a live audience.
Their first Fourth Wall event went well at the Fabric Factory in Parkes Street, with the Division 2 team beating 42 Gaming 2-0.
Fourth Wall are a new UK esports organisation announced last month, featuring management who most recently worked at the now-defunct X7 Esports, and before that ran organisations like London Esports, Bulldog Esports and Absolved.
Alfie Wright, CEO of Fourth Wall Esports Club, told Esports News UK at the first live Fourth Wall event:
“One of the things that’s lacking in the League community is in-person community events, where people can come, chat and watch a game live. We had our League of Legends team bootcamp here so thought it was the perfect chance to utilise the space at Staffs Uni London with a student-led broadcast, and I think it’s turned out really well.”
Alfie Wright, Fourth Wall Esports Club
“With the rosters, Staffs Uni partnership and more announcements coming over the next couple of weeks, it means that we keep going. I think a lot of esports teams can slowly stagnate, but we want to keep growing on an upwards trajectory.”
Alfie also spoke about having a talented team with a lot of experience, shouting out Lauryn Halpenny managing socials, caster Jack ‘Middlecott’ Davies organising the events, and more. Fourth Wall also have head of operations Tony ‘Newts’ Newton, League of Legends team manager Robin ‘Robinho’ Cheng and Nile ‘Oldboy’ Lynch, former X7 academy team manager, among others.
Fourth Wall also have an academy team in NLC Division 3.D, with both teams performing well.
Robin ‘Robinho’ Cheng, League of Legends team manager, told Esports News UK at this Fourth Wall event: “I think this is a great event and I think Alfie did a really good job putting all this together, with the whole Div 1/2 situation, so I think we’ve done really well to get to where we are right now. We just need people to get behind us so we can keep growing and get bigger and better.”
Jo ‘Yusa’ Cortez, UK League of Legends bot laner/ADC for Fourth Wall, said: “I feel we’re so fortunate as players to have this experience of coming into this bootcamp, it’s so nice to meet my team and play games together at a specific location. You can mesh together well as a team and talk to each other in-person, it’s nice to build that bond with your team in person.”
Yusa is an experienced player now, having been with other well-known UK orgs in the past like MNM Gaming, Resolve, Diabolus and more. He said he’s taking the Mikel Arteta approach and will take it game-by-game with Fourth Wall, rather than making a big bold public aim to reach NLC Division 1.
Esports News UK also caught up with Tabitha ‘Tabby’ Cole, a female LoL player in Fourth Wall’s academy team, in a separate interview.
She said: ““Honestly, I think being part of Fourth Wall Academy has probably been one of my best team experiences to date, just from the team environment, the staff and also getting to know the Div 2 team as well. The bootcamp was amazing; firstly, I feel like it’s rare that a bootcamp from an esports organisation, at this level at least, actually happens.”
Jack ‘Middlecott’ Davies, caster and content lead at Fourth Wall, added: “I mostly dealt with getting casters involved and getting some behind the scenes stuff with production sorted. And a big shout out must be given to the students running production today, they were absolutely amazing and were in the studio a hell of a lot longer than me, making sure things were going to work, and I’ve been really impressed with them.
“This was actually my first proper in-studio cast today with a live audience and the desk there, and it was absolutely fucking fantastic!”
Middlecott, caster and Fourth Wall content lead
Middlecott was joined on the desk at this Fourth Wall event by host Keltoum ‘Giniro’ Baddaje and caster Maxwell ‘BlackBloxer’ Calvert, with Giniro walking around the venue talking to fans in-between games, and getting some to take part in a spin the wheel game to win prizes.
One participant, DonJake, who is the owner of another UK esports organisation Ruddy Gaming, ended up winning a Roccat mouse. He told Esports News UK he googled it, saw it was worth about £50 and said he will be putting it on eBay when he gets home.
“I put six magnets on monitors today, I installed viruses on PCs, I was going to rugby tackle [the players on stage to stop them taking the baron] but I unfortunately couldn’t make that happen,” DonJake joked. “For me, I’ve attended this Fourth Wall event because sometimes the kings have to come down from their castles to see what the peasants are doing. We’re all about connecting with the common people – the unwashed masses, as the Romans would say.”
Fourth Wall event gives opportunities to esports students
The Fourth Wall event series is a result of a partnership between Fourth Wall and Staffordshire University London, which will see students get involved with the production of the broadcasts and have the opportunity to be involved in paid internships at Fourth Wall.
Oscar Croft, one of the esports students running the event, who specifically looked after audio, told Esports News UK: “I think it went really well. There were some iffy bits here and there, but overall it was a great event. This is my first proper event I’ve worked on and it’s given me a big insight into how it’d be if I was to go into this industry after uni, which is the end goal really.”
Callum, another esports student at Staffs Uni London, commented: “I think as a first day it went very well, but there are things to improve on and do better for next time. With this course, you get that choice [of doing different things], production to me stands out – and I’d love to do that [and work on events in the future.]”
Around 50 people signed up to attend the first Fourth Wall event, and although not every single one of them showed up (as is often the case at events), it wasn’t a bad turnout and there was a nice atmosphere at the venue.
Most importantly, Fourth Wall showed events like this are possible, and have a lot of promise for the future.
Related article: MSI tickets on-sale date, prices and venue revealed as LoL esports heads to London
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.
