Who is Kieran Holmes-Darby, the General Manager of Los Ratones? Get to know him in this in-depth interview on signing Caedrel as a player for Excel, his day-to-day work, and LR’s future

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In late 2024, Kieran Holmes-Darby was announced as the general manager of Los Ratones, the star-studded League of Legends team formed by streaming star Caedrel. The pair actually go back years – in 2018 Caedrel joined Excel Esports, an organisation Kieran founded over a decade ago.

So, what’s it like for them to be working together once more? Has Kieran missed League of Legends? And what should fans of Los Ratones know about the organisation’s general manager? Dom Sacco asks all this and more in this exclusive interview for Esports News UK, following our recent interview with Caedrel’s agent Mitsouko Anderson.

Dom Sacco: Good to talk to you again Kieran, and what an exciting role you now have. What’s it been like so far since joining Los Ratones as general manager? 

Kieran Holmes-Darby: I think in some ways it’s taken me back to the early days of building Excel Esports, where you’re getting involved in anything and everything. No job is too small for you to pick up, because ultimately you’re just there to do what you can to move things forward. But then in other ways it’s completely different to Excel.

In the early days, Excel never had a lot of eyeballs on it. It was something that you needed to really cultivate the community around and really grow the fanbase and the eyeballs. On day one, Los Ratones had a shedload of eyeballs on it, because of Caedrel, his vision, and the players we were able to attract.

So in some ways it’s been very similar and in other ways been completely different, but I think the overall feeling for me is it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve really enjoyed being back involved in the esports scene with a project like this. 

Since your time at Excel/GiantX, you’ve worked in sim racing with Formula E and with creative agency Ear to the Ground. We met in the early days of UK League of Legends, and have seen its highs and lows. Is it nice for you to be back in League of Legends? Having been involved with the game for so long, do you see work in this area as work, or more as play?

I feel like I did my stint and I got what I call ‘a proper job’ for a little bit, outside of esports (smiles). But I think, you know, both of us were essentially a part of building an industry, at least in our region, right? We were a part of that and it means it always feels like home. 

Even when I’m not involved, I try to keep tabs on it. It’s hard when you’re not fully in it because I knew everything that was going on in esports, because I was so in it. When you’re not in it, it’s a bit difficult to represent yourself as an expert because you don’t actually know everything. 

So now, I’m sort of back in it and trying to become an expert again. It’s nice to see that there are still a lot of people that I knew who are still around. But there are also some new players in the game, pardon the pun, that I don’t know and don’t know about me or my history. So we need to build those relationships. But it’s all fun for me to be back involved in this industry that I love. 

It’s good to have you back mate. You were saying about building relationships and people getting to know your story, and on that note, there may be Los Ratones fans out there who don’t know your story. So can you tell them about your background?

Yeah, it feels weird going back. Everyone was quite young in the industry to some extent, but I always felt like I was punching above where I should have been because of my age. I always had a bit of a thing about my age because I was quite young. 

Really? I always saw you as that sort of young and dynamic go-getter.

I think internally I had a bit of imposter syndrome, because I was sitting at LEC owner tables at 24, 25, and like everyone else around the table had done a lot more, not even just in esports, but in other industries before that. So I had a bit of imposter syndrome at the time, but it feels weird now to look back on it and feel like almost the older person in the room (laughs). 

Going back, I’ve been involved in esports in some capacity I suppose since I’ve had an Xbox 360! I competed in GameBattles. I was a lot more on the FPS side of things, I played on the circuits of Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty. That was like my entry into the esports world. I realised I bloody loved it and anything I could make competitive, I was keen on. But I just didn’t have the ability level to ever be a professional esports player.

I decided that if you can’t be on a team yourself, start one. So me and my brother [Joel Holmes-Darby] founded Excel Esports in 2014. It was a venture between two brothers who had a passion for the space. It felt like we had a skillset that would work. Joel was a management consultant and I was studying to be a lawyer, so we had some corporate backing even though we were massive esports nerds.

We had a bit of corporate nous about us and yeah, we started Excel, which was never meant to be more than a passion project really. It was never supposed to be my career. It was just something that we loved doing. 

📸 @calle

— Kieran Holmes-Darby (@KieranHDarby) December 13, 2024

Excel Esports were one of ten organisations that entered the inaugural LEC season in early 2018. How did you manage that?

Over the years, we had multiple teams in multiple different titles, and found ourselves as sort of the best League of Legends team in the UK. We had just won the UK circuit and thought, “oh, well, you know, the LEC applications are opening. We’ll have a pop.” 

With our organisation we knew we could write arguably the best application of any esports organisation out there. We were really confident in terms of the application we were going to write and how we were going to answer Riot’s questions, because of our background we felt that European-wide, we could actually put together the best application. Now whether Riot would accept that is a whole other story, because although I think we’d established ourselves as the leading UK-based organisation at that point, we weren’t that big compared to some of the European counterparts.

Long story short, Riot did accept [our application]. So we entered the LEC and I think that was really the point where everything went to a tier-one level. We upscaled from three employees to about 30 employees overnight. It was insane growth that we went on and so I basically ran a team in the LEC for a number of years. 

As an advocate of UK esports, this was so exciting for me, and many others, to see at the time. However, you did later move away from your role as the industry went through some changes too.

I think esports commercialised probably quicker than it was ready to do so. It was still in a hyper growth phase and I think so many investors got involved and big brands were involved, who were serious players. Esports was still in quite a scrappy startup phase and it was desperately trying to be commercialised. 

I think some bad decisions were made across the board, not even in my lane. We’ve all seen news articles of some bad investments here and there or some bad leadership decisions. It’s always going to be like that in a growing industry, and in my lane, it was a case of I had some people dropped on my head, essentially. 

It was sort of said, you know, “Kieran’s quite young, he’s still learning on the job, let’s bring in some people who have got more experience to help him run the organisation.” 

That was a very difficult time for me and I ultimately ended up leaving the day-to-day operations of that organisation, because I didn’t have control over the direction anymore and I always felt like I had a good idea of where I wanted the business to go, even though I didn’t have the experience. 

When I stepped away from Excel and shortly after that, they ended up merging with Giants [to form GiantX] as I stepped away from the day-to-day operations. I felt like there wasn’t anything left in esports for me that would motivate me to stay in the industry. I feel like I’d kind of been there, done it, got the T-shirt. But I still loved it. So, I wanted to be attached to it even if I couldn’t work in it.  So I found a couple of jobs that were sort of loosely attached to esports, but also broadening my experience. So that’s my esports story as short as I can tell it! Sorry, I’m kind of taking this in a different direction. 

No, it’s good because this explains your background and I think the rats, the fans of Los Ratones, will appreciate that. On that topic, you’ve known Caedrel for years. You signed him as a player way back in late 2018. What was that like?

Not that many people know this part of the story, which is quite interesting. When we were in Excel, we really wanted to try and keep that British identity as much as we could, but I think everyone knows there aren’t a whole host of British-based tier-one pro players, right? 

Caedrel was a big part of us being able to hang our hat on someone who was, you know, born in the UK and still playing at the tier-one level. 

Caedrel was sort of the poster boy for us [at Excel Esports] for a time, and we would really push that narrative that we had a British player. And through that period, I became really close with Marc, on a friendship level. Even though he was still one of my players and I was CEO, we used to hang out, we would go for drinks together or go out for dinner, and we just got on really well. He was one of the good ones. 

So we were quite close throughout that period, and even post playing for XL, we sort of stayed quite close. And then when Marc transitioned into doing the commentary side, I was really supportive of of that, because I always felt like he knew so much about the game and also he was really articulate in the way that he explained it even to me, who knows a bit about the game but knows nowhere near the amount that Marc knows. 

I actually acted as Marc’s agent for about six months, which not a lot of people know. I basically said to him, “look, I’ll help you, but we need to get you into a proper agency because I don’t have the time to do you justice, and I think you’ve got a lot of potential and I think you could do some really cool stuff in the scene, and there’s no way I’ve got the time to really do that, but I will help you in this interim period.” 

He basically just needed someone he trusts and someone who knows the commercial side of esports. He trusted me with that. Not many people know this, but I actually negotiated Marc’s first ever Riot deal as a caster. So I got him involved in all that.  And then, you know, once that was there, I sort of said, “Right, let’s get you into a proper agency.” 

And he ended up moving on, and obviously now is represented by Mitsouko [Anderson] of Yume Talent, and she’s a fantastic agent. She does a much better job than I ever did! 

That was kind of the start of Marc and I’s relationship post-XL. 

So, how did you first get involved with Los Ratones?

When Caedrel came up with this project idea of Los Ratones, again he needed someone who had been there, done it, and got the T-shirt in esports, but I suppose most importantly, someone he can trust. So he reached out to me, and I was like, “oh, well, didn’t really expect to get back involved in esports in such a way”. 

However, when I spoke to Marc and we had quite a few conversations about it, I started off just giving advice as to how you should develop and he was like, “mate, I think you should come and do this.”  And I was like, “yeah, actually, the more I give you advice about it, the more I think this is a really great project and actually I can probably add quite a bit of value here.” 

So yeah, that was kind of how I got involved in the Los Ratones project. But I suppose that just tells the story of mine and Marc’s relationship a bit better, and why he reached out to me specifically. 

What were your first impressions of Caedrel? You said you saw his potential, but did you ever think he could reach the heights he’s got to on Twitch and in League of Legends? 

Marc always had something extra, I felt, and that’s why I felt like he really could be the poster boy [for XL]. If anything, I think we weren’t set up to throw someone into stardom. We were struggling in the LEC, and we couldn’t really get things going. 

Marc will admit he wasn’t like the best player in the LEC at that point, right? But he had something extra, and I remember saying at the time, I remember sitting in on some XL scrim sessions and I was thinking, Caedrel would make an amazing coach, because the way he delivers feedback, the way he understands the game. I always felt like he was going to make an unbelievable coach. 

I didn’t know that he would go on to do the things he’s done from a streaming perspective, but I always knew that he would be an amazing coach. And that’s what made him a great analyst on camera as well, right, because he’s got the ability to translate information and he really understands the game. 

I completely agree. What’s your day-to-day like with Los Ratones? Are you full-time in this general manager role?

I’m not full-time at the moment. There are some weeks where I feel full time and there are some weeks where it’s sort of peaks and troughs. The reason I’m not full-time is because this is all about growth and building something genuinely sustainable. As you go on in your career and you progress up the corporate ladder, let’s say, you adapt your lifestyle to where you’re at, right, in terms of like a job. And for Los Ratones to essentially employ me full-time, I don’t think that would be a good use of funds for where we want this brand to grow. 

As an up and coming business, we work with a lot of freelancers. But once we get to the point that we’re generating enough revenue to start employing staff, I don’t think I should be employee number one. We’re probably better off bringing in some more junior people who, you know, maybe it’s their first grad job or something. I think that would be a better use of the funds that we start to generate. So, that’s the reason I’m not full-time at the moment. 

At times it’s an advisory-heavy role, but at other times it’s very much in the day-to-day operations with the players and bootcamps and stuff, I’m very hands-on. I always say you’re never too senior in esports to plug in a PC! So I get my hands dirty when it’s bootcamp time. But because it’s so new, I do a bit of everything. I manage all the finances, but I also do the day-to-day with the players. I help make sure that they’ve got travel and accommodation sorted, I liaise with the leagues, I’m involved with commercial partners to some extent, and so yeah, a bit of everything. 

Rat takeover baby 🐀🖤🤍 https://t.co/aO7UfqkGPx

— Kieran Holmes-Darby (@KieranHDarby) April 3, 2025

Los Ratones obviously won the Nottingham Winter 2025 NLC finals, and the EMEA Masters, becoming the first team from our NLC region to win one, so congrats for that! You missed out on Nottingham, but Synygy stepped up to help the players. Is that something you would’ve done, if you could’ve made it?

Yeah, that’s what I did at Red Bull League of its Own 2024. I was team manager for the weekend, which was really nice, actually, to go back to the roots and running around after players and playing the waterboy role. I really enjoyed it, if I’m honest.

It was a weekend of work where I was smiling the whole time, even though I was doing jobs I hadn’t done in a very long time. 

I’m fine to roll my sleeves up and do that. I think realistically, we probably do need someone who is more a player manager/coordinator role for those events, so we will look to give opportunities to people to do stuff like that. 

Speaking of bootcamps, Los Ratones bootcamped at the GiantX HQ earlier in the year. That must have been strange to go back to the organisation you helped build.

I’m actually still a minority shareholder in Giant X, so I still have a relationship with the investors there. They reached out and were quite interested to collaborate with the new project. Obviously we don’t compete directly with GX in anything right now, so they were quite interested to collaborate and I was kind of the man that could make that happen, I suppose, because I sat in between the two.  They were brilliant. They hosted us fantastically and it was a bit strange walking back into the old office and seeing some of my old employees. But I have a good relationship with all of them, you know, so it wasn’t weird in that sense, it was just surreal. 

I’m still invested in GiantX’s success at this stage. I want them to do well, I’m rooting for them to some extent, even though I’m not involved in the day-to-day operations, and yeah, they’ve got some good stuff going on. Their setup in London is brilliant and they hosted us fantastically. So, we would happily use that again. 

Got to hear the @LosRatoneslol origin story, as an evolution of the old Excel Esports founded in a Wetherspoons Pub classic! Great to have @Caedrel & the guys over at the Shoreditch Office. pic.twitter.com/XHhha6T0xh

— Dave Harris (@daveharrisAUS) February 25, 2025

Kieran with Dave Harris, one of the investors behind Excel Esports/GiantX – the pair met up again when Los Ratones bootcamped at the GiantX HQ in London

What’s it like being a part of Los Ratones? Have you had any memorable fan interactions, what’s it like being a part of the culture and buzz surrounding the organisation? 

It’s amazing. All I’ve seen is just pure support. I’m not trying to be front and center and the face of anything, I’ve been there and done that with XL. I’m just trying to help Marc achieve what he wants to achieve with Los Ratones. 

I think it’s important that the community who mean so much to us and are so invested at least know who I am, and they hopefully think Los Ratones is in good hands. It’s important that we don’t sit in the shadows too much.  So I’ve been trying to kind of balance being like, “hi, I am here, I’m doing stuff, and I love you all, thank you,” and then going back and doing the work! 

So I don’t need to be front and center too much, but anything that I have put out there, it’s all been purely supportive [from the community]. 

The NLC is enjoying an amazing resurgence this year, and so many people in the community have thanked Caedrel for bringing his team in, and bringing immense viewership to the league. It had higher peak viewership than the Americas LTA in Winter 2025. Los Ratones are in the lower bracket semi-final next, and if they win that, they will reach the NLC Spring 2025 LAN finals in Copenhagen. Would you be going along with the team to that, should they qualify?

Absolutely. It’s blocked out in the calendar. I don’t want to miss another NLC finals because I was gutted not to be at the Winter one in Nottingham, where we had the meet and greet, which looked a lot of fun. It put a big smile on my face to see how many people turned out for obviously a brand that I very much care about. So I want to see that in person and want to be there, desperately. We’ve got to qualify first! 

Good luck. I think you’ll make it. And just lastly, what’s next for Los Ratones? Caedrel recently said he wouldn’t pay €20m for an LEC spot, and that Los Ratones might not even exist by the end of the year, saying: “I don’t know if we’re going to be in a tier-one region or in Korea. I don’t know what is going to happen. The landscape ain’t easy, man.” What are your views on that?

Well, you know what’s fun? Marc is my business partner, and working with someone who talks so openly about what is going on with the decisions of the organisation to lots of people every day…! 

I know what’s going on, but it’s interesting to see quotes of what Marc’s saying publicly, and he’s being completely honest, which I love. That’s how I want to do business. I want to be completely open with the community as to what’s going on. And the truth is – we don’t know. 

We’re exploring all sorts of avenues at the moment of how we could potentially play in the LEC, or where we’re going to end up in 2026. And the honest answer is sat here – Marc and I have the best understanding of what could happen. And I don’t know! I wouldn’t go as far to say Los Ratones isn’t going to be around at the end of the year because I won’t let that happen. Because it’s too good what we’ve got here, and it’s too much fun. So I don’t want to let that happen, I’ll go as far as to say that, but I don’t know what it looks like. 

All I can say is we’re working hard to make sure that the journey continues and the journey is interesting to be a part of. That’s what I’ll say. 

I have to say, Kieran, on a personal note, I think it’s exciting. You don’t know what’s around the corner. When you know what’s going to happen in five months, six months and this and that, sometimes it takes a bit of the unknown out of it. You don’t know what’s going to happen. And that for me is what makes it interesting. 

Well, this is what’s funny. I’m also a shareholder in Los Ratones, but Marc is the owner of this brand. So the difference between me going to shareholder meetings when I was at XL, if I’d sat there at a shareholder meeting XL and gone, “I don’t know, I haven’t got a clue,” I would have been killed and fired probably on the spot! Like they would have absolutely thrown me out of that room and gone, “this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing”. 

But to sit there with Marc and be like, “I don’t know,” and he goes, “yeah, I don’t know either.” 

Like that’s the difference of where we’re at, but that’s what makes it fun. You know, we have tried to bring as much structure as we can to the organisation, we’ve tried to have a plan, we’ve built a business model that we think is sustainable that I’m very proud of. So we have a plan, but there’s a whole lot of flexibility in that because we just don’t know. And I think that’s okay. 

Best thing I did all weekend was get this man the biggest baguette pic.twitter.com/ZnYGqoLIHc

— Kieran Holmes-Darby (@KieranHDarby) December 16, 2024

Kieran tweeting about working with Los Ratones at the Red Bull League of its Own in late 2024

On the business model, how are the Los Ratones merch sales doing? Because when I look at some esports orgs I question how well their merch is selling, but there was a lot of buzz around the LR merch launch earlier this year. 

Obviously I can’t share numbers, but we’re doing really well. I think Marc’s spoken about this on stream, but I’m not sure it’s spoken about that much, though I think it should be. We have a profit share in place with the players. So, the whole business model is built around if Los Ratones does well, the players do well. That’s kind of how we built it. And I think the business model makes sense, it’s sustainable for everyone. And at the moment it’s doing well for everyone, so it’s great. 

We want to explore other revenue streams as well. You know, commercial partners as you might expect, traditional esports routes, but with the merch I think we’ve got an opportunity to do something a bit different. So we’ll keep exploring that as well. 

Kieran, it’s been an amazing chat. Los Ratones is an amazing story and it’s going to be one of my last interviews in esports, so I’ve enjoyed this. Is there anything else you’d like to add? You did a charity run recently, didn’t you? Congrats on that. 

Thank you, that’d be cool if you’re alright throwing a SpecialEffect link in – donate here as donations are still open.

Maximum effort yesterday 👊🏼 pic.twitter.com/I6YLO4Howh

— Kieran Holmes-Darby (@KieranHDarby) April 28, 2025

Of course, you’re welcome. Thanks for your time and good luck to you and Los Ratones in the future.

Dom Sacco

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.