Credit to Kelan Watling for the news tip and to Hannah Marie for additional reporting
Note: This is an old April Fools article!
The UK Government is planning to launch its own esports division, Esports News UK can exclusively reveal.
The Conservative Party is set to soon announce operations in competitive gaming, falling within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and this will include its own team.
Up until now, the UK Government has been criticised by the UK esports community for its lack of support for esports, with ministers generally taking little to no interest in the space.
But this will soon change, with the likes of Liz Truss, Michael Gove, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak himself on board with the ‘levelling up’ initiative. They will also form their own esports team to help promote esports in the UK – and liaise with existing organisations to assist them on their journey.
UK Government to announce plans for esports division and team – but who will join it?
Sources say the group had attempted to get Matt Hancock on board, but his rate of £10,000 sterling per day was said to be too high, so negotiations with him are still ongoing.
Others say Matt Hancock showed initial interest in the initiative, but was busy ‘visiting a close personal friend’ during initial tryouts.
Esports News UK understands the Government is open to importing players to its team from across the world, but Liz Truss is not happy by this move and hopes to keep the players signed homegrown. She instead has plans to enlist players to eventually sell abroad at what she is calling ‘esports markets’, akin to the cheese, apple and pork markets she is so passionate about.
Liz Truss was also trialled on the Government esports team herself, but a source said she ‘played so badly a lettuce could beat her’.
The news comes after the Government embarrassed itself by launching its own Discord server, and is now hoping to make amends in the digital space with the new esports division.
The news also comes after Mayor of London Sadiq Khan spoke about the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational taking place in London this year, and Labour MP Alex Sobel spoke as part of a panel on esports in the UK.
Shadow Culture Minister Alex Davies-Jones also called on the UK Government to better understand esports in an interview with Esports News UK last year.
Sources say the Tories were conscious of this rising interest in esports from the Labour Party, and were advised by consultancy firm Lirpa Loof to dive headfirst into the sector themselves.
Liz Truss was trialled on the Government esports team, but a source said she ‘played so badly a lettuce could beat her’.
All that’s left is for the Government to decide a name for its new esports division.
The Tories are said to have put the team name to a vote internally, and the front runners are currently ‘Levelling Up’ and ‘Esportsy McEsports Face’.
Esports News UK also understands Labour caught wind of the news, and had sent the Tory Party a copy of 1987 game Gary Lineker’s Superstar Soccer for the ZX Spectrum. Sources said the Conservatives were furious with the jibe and are said to be practicing FIFA ‘really, really hard’ and plan to challenge Lineker and the BBC to a LAN tournament, before calling a general election.
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.
