Platform gaming bar to reopen with changes to the venue – interview with founder on what’s different, lessons learnt and what’s next

Platform gaming bar exterior
The Platform gaming bar in Shoreditch is set to reopen, just a few months after Platform Hub One Ltd entered liquidation. Dom Sacco sits down with Platform Co-Founder Nicolo Portunato to talk about new investors, putting together a new team, and plans for new events.

Platform is set to reopen in the coming weeks thanks to new investors. It’s expected to reopen on September 12th 2024.

The chain, which first opened its Shoreditch bar at 2B Worship Street, London, EC2A 2AH in March 2019, faced challenges early on during the covid pandemic, before entering a more sustainable period in the years that followed.

The bar offered a place for guests to eat, drink and play video games, plus the Shoreditch venue featured a 5v5 PC LAN stage area. It hosted events from streamer meet-ups to esports tournaments, watch parties and more. Even yours truly, Esports News UK, held a few networking events there.

In March 2023, Platform opened a second venue at Canary Wharf, but the company said it did not meet expectations, and due to its high operating costs, Platform entered liquidation earlier this year.

Now it’s returning with new investors under a new limited company name – NewCo – as it looks to refocus on its stengths in Shoreditch. The news comes as Platform has been teasing its return on social media:

Update: Platform gaming bar officially reopened on September 12th 2024.

The venue will feature Nintendo Switch and PS5 consoles, as well as the PC stage returning, plus a revamped food and beverage offering to be announced.

Guests will be able to book 90 minute slots of gaming on consoles, or 60 minutes on PC, plus there will be food and drink bundles and corporate packages.

Platform has also retained its logo and branding, and has kept Philips/AOC and Acer as stage partners.

Other changes will be made to the venue, including the addition of two new gaming booths, a new lick of paint, a sound system replacement, lighting upgrades including new LED colour changing tubes, IT room recabling and a website update.

Quickfire Q&A with Nicolo Portunato on Platform gaming bar reopening: ‘We’ve had to make sacrifices’

It’s great to hear Platform is reopening in Shoreditch. Can we expect a similar offering to what you had before?

Basically almost everything will be the same in terms of the offering, but we’ll hopefully make some upgrades to the venue. There will be more console booths, so more gaming will be available, and we’ll have a sound system upgrade and a change of lighting and painting, as well as changes to the food and beverage menu.

The opening hours will also be similar – we’ll be open seven days a week, from the early afternoon to night, like we used to do.

Events have been one of our successes. They’ve been great for us and we want to carry these on. We are more than happy to work with partners on events. We are also very happy to still have our partners Philips/AOC and Acer on board.

We’ll have a brand new team, except for the general manager, Emily. And we have new investors coming in, who know the industry and have been helping us purchase the business back and invest in its future. It’s a very different type of investor we had before where they might be more active because they’re UK-based.

What kind of ownership do you now have? Who are the new investors?

The investors are private. The two main directors will remain as my brother [Tomaso Portunato] and I, but we won’t be full-time.

We’ve also given part of the company to old investors, so they can still keep a piece of the cake because of their generous support in the last five years – and making Platform a reality.

worlds 2022 final viewing party in london 1
Esports News UK has hosted Worlds viewing parties at Platform

What are your reflections on entering liquidation and the process coming out of it?

It’s been challenging and stressful but it’s been a very good experience to navigate this situation. 

It’s scary, but in the end it’s manageable and doable. We obviously had to make a lot of sacrifices in terms of ownership, giving a lot. But it’s better than nothing. We’ve also got a lot of love and support from our suppliers. So we really wanted to give something back, and we’re managing it.

What caused you to cease trading? You entered liquidation one year after opening a bar in Canary Wharf.

We had quite a large amount of debt, then we were trying to change the curve in the Canary Wharf venue. We tried that for several months and it didn’t work. 

A problem was we didn’t have the two venues as two separate businesses. When we signed the lease with Canary Wharf, we had to be in the same company as our Shoreditch venue.

So we thought the best business decision was to close everything and not put the employees at the company in a worse situation. It’s never nice to close a company. We decided to close and start with a clean slate instead of thinning the company bit by bit. 

“We tried our best. I would say one of the big challenges of Canary Wharf is it’s a very expensive area and also very corporate. We didn’t really nail that corporate side of things, so we either missed the boat, or we were not really good at this. I think it’s a balance. We don’t put the fault on the location, it’s about our teams and everything.”

Nicolo Portunato, Platform

What’s next for Platform after reopening the Shoreditch venue?

Our plan is just to focus on Shoreditch for one year, and then we’ll decide with our investors what should be next. They may see [other] opportunities come to the business, but we’ll decide after 12 months what’s going to be next.

It could be that we keep the Shoreditch [venue] and just optimise it. Or we’ll see if we want to raise more and expand, or maybe look at franchising. 

So there could be big plans for the future, but I think we will wait at least 12 months [before deciding what to do next].

Is there anything else you’d like to add? How can people join your team?

We want to bring some positive news in the industry by coming back too, as there’s been a lot of negative news.

We’re looking to build a new team too.

Anyone interested in joining the new Platform team can email Nicolo here.

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