One of the partners of The Wired Lobby – a former esports bar in Middlesbrough – has spoken out about its closure and debts owed.
Gaming Venues Ltd, the company behind the venue, went into liquidation in July and owes creditors just over £923,000, reports Teesside Live.
The company received around half a million pounds from Middlesbrough Council, according to the report, half as a loan and half as a SPF Levelling Up grant.
Gaming Venues owes just under £400,000 to Middlesbrough Council, £400,000 to Paul Jones, £31,000 to British Gas, £20,000 to HMRC and more, as per this statement of affairs document on the Gaming Venues Ltd Companies House page, which lists creditors.
The Wired Lobby came about following a conversation between Andy Preston, the former mayor of Middlesbrough, and Edwin Ford, MD of Gaming Venues Ltd, back in 2021, as per our previous article on The Wired Lobby in 2023.
The Wired Lobby had several delays following its initial proposed May 2022 opening date. It eventually opened in late 2023 in Captain Cook Square, temporarily closed in February 2024, reopened in March, then permanently closed in April.
Irish and UK esports organisation Katana Gaming were one of the venue’s partners and had helped with its LAN events. A Call of Duty LAN, which took place at the venue earlier this year, was won by UK org Noctem Esports.
Katana Gaming on The Wired Lobby closure and plans to host other Call of Duty LANs elsewhere
Katana Gaming CEO Jacques ‘Heffy’ Heffernan told Esports News UK: “Katana were partnered with The Wired Lobby (TWL) as their official tournament partner for Call of Duty, Valorant and Apex Legends.
“I connected with TWL in November 2022 when they were still renovating the venue and had several meetings in Middlesbrough finalising our partnership. We advised them in general regarding esports, and started to pull a plan together for the first Katana Gaming Call of Duty LAN.
“There were unforeseeable delays with them opening the venue which in defence of TWL were due to external factors. We had planned a community Katana member meetup for mid 2023 which was cancelled due to delays preventing opening. We rescheduled for October 8th and 9th. However, during the week before we were notified that because of insurance reasons the venue was not allowed to be open. This resulted in Katana having to refund member hotel bookings and travel.
“Finally we were able to lock in a member meetup for December 2023. The weekend was great and the venue was fully open. This enabled the team to appropriately test the venue for our first LAN.
“On March 2nd and 3rd 2024 we successfully ran the first Call of Duty LAN the UK has seen in five years. It was a great event! We had plans to host more LANs at The Wired Lobby. The venue was superb and we had built a strong partnership with the TWL management team. Unfortunately, we were informed that they were dealing with internal business issues which meant dates for a second LAN, albeit in high demand, could not be locked in.”
Heffy, Katana Gaming
“The Katana admin team have been engaged and working on alternative venue options to still provide Katana LAN 2, which we plan to announce more details on soon.
“I am personally very disheartened and deflated by the situation. A lot of time and effort has been spent in planning trying to bring more events to the UK/EU Call of Duty scene and it was the hopes and ambitions of Katana Gaming to continue hosting events with TWL.
“I empathise with the team at TWL, they have worked tremendously hard and genuinely had a great vision.”
Heffy confirmed that Katana are planning more LANs for 2025.
There’s more on the LAN from this year in this documentary:
Jack Stovell, the founder of UK esports org Noctem Esports, who won the CoD LAN at The Wired Lobby, commented: “Luckily for us, the prize money from the LAN was paid out by Katana to us the next day.
“The venue was really cool, we loved the set up and it seemed really promising – the Katana team did a great job at utilising the equipment on site, the team behind the bar and around the venue were all super friendly.
“There were a few question marks around high pricing for both renting a single PC, and renting the arena. I think we were all excited at the prospect of potentially having a venue to host UK CoD lans regularly, but all I heard was lots of trouble behind the scenes. The ‘owner’ who’d spoken to everyone at the venue and tried to line up more partners for this and ‘a London location’ wasn’t directly involved in the business.”
The Wired Lobby joins other esports-related businesses that entered liquidation over the past year. Creditors recently declined an offer from Insomnia organisers Player1 Events, which is in liquidation, and Platform gaming bar reopened last week, after entering liquidation earlier this year.
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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.
