The UK Esports League aka UKEL 4 Nations Division 1 teams for 2024 have been confirmed, after the promotion tournament concluded this week.
Exe Machina from the University of Exeter’s esports society, and London esports organisation Lionscreed, have progressed to Division 1 after becoming the final two teams in the promotion tournament.
Exeter beat Arcadeia and Lionscreed to qualify, while Lionscreed beat Paragon in the upper bracket and Arcadeia in the lower bracket to do so.
This means Arcadeia and Paragon will play in Division 2 of the UKEL 4 Nations for 2024.
UKEL congratulated the teams in Division 1 and offered commiserations to Paragon and Arcadeia.
The most recent UKEL 4 Nations Division 1 tournament in 2023 saw Tempest Gaming win, after beating Ruddy Esports’ academy team Ruddy Painkillers 3-0 in the final.
Both of these teams then progressed to the inaugural Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC) Regional Promotion Series (RPS), which was won by Rich Gang earlier this month.
RPS finalists Rich Gang and Kaos Esport reached the final to progress to the higher-tier NLC Spring 2024 Division 2 (the UKEL of course being the LoL national league for the UK and Ireland, and the NLC being the EMEA Regional League for teams from the UK, Ireland and Nordic countries).
Other teams in the UKEL Division 1 this year included Venomcrest, Verzik, DMG UK, Belfast Storm, Arcadeia and Lionscreed.
A few months ago, Venomcrest and Lundqvist Lightside promoted to NLC Spring 2024 Division 1 and, last month, Freaks 4U stepped down as the NLC license holder.
UKEL 4 Nations Autumn 2023 viewership
The UKEL also revealed its Autumn 2023 broadcast metrics, with almost 50,000 live views, more than 11,000 unique viewers and solid growth over their most recent season, Summer 2021 (before this and other leagues were shut down by Freaks4U and Riot).
On a side note, as we approach the end of year, we want to give credit to the UKEL team for bringing back the league in 2023.
Here’s to a full year of UK League of Legends in the UKEL for 2024.
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.
