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Ruddy Esports have this week made the biggest announcement in the history of their UK esports organisation, with a star-studded roster, rebrand and ownership changes.
They have also called on other esports organisations to step up their content game in the Arozzi Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC), the EMEA Regional League for the UK and Nordics region, in 2025.
Popular streamer IWillDominate aka Dom and coach YamatoCannon (who run ‘The Sack Down’ podcast) have joined forces with Ruddy to put together a top roster.
Dom and Yamato now share ownership of the NLC team slot with Ruddy, but do not own part of Ruddy as an entity. DonJake, Regan and Harry remain co-owners of the esports organisation.
This comes as Ruddy Esports have rebranded to ‘The Ruddy Sack’, with the old logo also replaced.
It’s the latest piece of news adding to the hype of the NLC this year, following roster announcements from Caedrel’s Los Ratones team, Nord Esports 2025 NLC roster, fellow UK organisation Verdant and more.
Ruddy also hosted a watch party at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London on January 16th.
I asked this question there:
We also caught up with DonJake and Teddy Westside from the event:
IWillDominate also spoke about the thinking behind the team in this video below.
He also said he wanted the sack in the team logo to have a crease in it, like a pair of balls, but that this wasn’t allowed.
The Ruddy Sack 2025 Winter NLC roster features Perkz, Jankos and others
Ruddy’s roster has some huge names on it, including Croatian top-laner Perkz, Polish jungler Jankos, Norwegian mid-laner LIDER, American bot laner Humzh and Swedish support player Hustlin.
Palestinian/Polish LoL personality YamatoCannon will be coaching the side.
Ruddy Up, indeed.
‘Other NLC orgs need to step it up if they want this region to still be thriving a year or two from now. This is THE time’ – The Ruddy Sack CCO’s call to action
Ruddy’s Chief Creative Officer, Teddy Westside (aka Limbani), told Esports News UK: “We’ve decided to go full 1930s rubberhose for our rebrand, we wanted to do something really different to all the gamerslop currently out there to show that we’re actually trying to innovate and push boundaries in the industry.
“This is THE time for NLC orgs to show people why they deserve to be looked at, I feel like most orgs are just going to try to rely on Los Ratones to do all their promo for them, but if you don’t have a team people can be proud to support, you’re never going to keep that attention on you.
“We’re quite lucky at Ruddy that we’ve got such a big grassroots fandom. We’re looking to do more watch parties and events this year as crowd sizes have been huge even without the big names we’ve pulled this year.
“I’m really worried about other teams’ content departments if they just continue to make generic edgy esports content that we’ve seen a million times, like what could you possibly have to lose by trying something new? The league was slowly falling apart for years, and now we’ve got this golden ticket out of the trenches, fucking USE IT. Make content that’s actually fun to watch.”
Teddy Westside, The Ruddy Sack
“The interviews Ruddy did at Worlds 2024 were pretty good but that should be the lowest bar we try to climb. We always want to do so much more but we’ve been limited by resources and viewership for so long now.
“It’s ridiculous that I’m just some guy who likes using Photoshop and there are people with degrees in design who are too afraid to try something different.
“There are so many frauds in this industry and I really think this year will show who can actually make great content. Passion paves paths and the other orgs need to step it up if they want this region to still be thriving a year or two from now.”
Teddy’s comments come a few days after Ruddy co-owner DonJake made similar remarks about the NLC in 2025. He said that teams need to improve their branding and content, and the quality of the NLC stream needs to be increased.
DonJake said. “This is NLC’s El Dorado but we need to create something more sustainable than gold.
“Be self-sufficient, if you’re in it for a quick buck you’ll quickly be found out. Make some fucking content. Thank you.”
DonJake, who is well-known in the League community for his offbeat interviews with players and personalities, also said on Twitter that he probably won’t be covering the LEC or other leagues in person this year, but will be focusing on international events instead, and wants to do some CS and Valorant content too.
The Ruddy Sack join other UK orgs in the NLC in 2025 including Bulldog, Venomcrest, Verdant and Los Ratones, a team founded by British League personality Caedrel.
Last but not least, see more scrims and insight from YamatoCannon here:
Get the latest NLC esports news here
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.
