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By Jack Stewart and Dom Sacco
LDN UTD founder Oliver Weingarten has expressed his frustration to Esports News UK over what led to the closure of the UK esports organisation.
LDN UTD was founded in 2018, and was later acquired by venture capital and Web3 company Ludus Gaming in late 2022, with Daniel Gee becoming the new CEO and James Sheehan joining as a non-executive director.
Following a lack of activity, LDN UTD officially dissolved on April 29th 2025.
Before the takeover, the London-based esports org had fielded teams in various games, such as League of Legends, hosted educational, esports and digital traineeship courses inside its HQ, the ‘Centre Of Excellence’ in Camden Town, and the facility also hosted other events and bootcamps for professional esports teams, including OG Esports, who had a partnership with LDN UTD.
Look through the LDN UTD archives on Esports News UK and you’ll see they also secured collaborations with various celebrities. Vamps bass guitarist Conor Ball became a co-owner of LDN UTD in 2022. The org partnered with rapper P-Money for an event aiming to stop knife crime and held anti-racism events with both London football club Leyton Orient and the Rio Ferdinand Foundation.
LDN UTD also partnered with the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, once for a workshop tackling youth unemployment and again for a Samsung KX event to promote health and wellbeing.
‘They did nothing with it’ – LDN UTD founder on most recent owners
Despite the organisation’s promising foundation, Weingarten – who resigned from the company (but remained a shareholder) a couple of years ago – expressed his disappointment with LDN UTD’s most recent owners, saying they never tried to build on its success.
“I can tell you, they did the grand sum of zero. They did nothing with it. From acquisition to dissolution, nothing,” he told Esports News UK.
Weingarten alleges that Ludus Gaming had plans to continue to drive forward LDN UTD by simultaneously acquiring another company, Looklabs, a Web3 (blockchain) game developer.
Looklabs seemed to quietly go dormant in mid-2023, with users in the official Looklabs Discord server complaining about a lack of updates.
Ludus Gaming Ltd also dissolved a year ago. Esports News UK reached out to the company for a statement at the time and did not receive official comment.
Weingarten added that after the acquisition of LDN UTD, Sheehan and Gee moved their other businesses into the Camden Centre of Excellence facility.
“They completely reconfigured the place,” Weingarten said. “I think the intention at the start was their businesses would pay the rent to cover the costs, but I don’t think it ever materialised as intended.”
Weingarten claims that because of these additional guests, and the company’s financial situation, the Centre of Excellence became unusable.
“We couldn’t do bootcamps, we couldn’t do any education initiatives, we couldn’t do any community nights. Everything LDN UTD stood for dissipated extremely quickly,” he said.
“As it became evidently clear Ludus wasn’t going to do anything with LDN UTD, I tried to find a solution. I was planning the first-ever, purpose-driven esports event at the London Assembly, after the acquisition, but I couldn’t do it in good faith. So I had to be very open with the mayor’s office and explained to them that we couldn’t proceed with the event at the time, which was a shame.”
Oliver Weingarten, LDN UTD founder
“Because I couldn’t reach a deal with [the new owners] on the debts that still existed to enable me to take LDN UTD back, I just had to sit back idly and watch in despair. I’m disappointed in Gee and Sheehan deciding to get involved, and I don’t know what sort of conscience they have because they did nothing with the business. They knew what we had achieved.
“We had content creators, we had teams, we got into VCT, we had UTD Education. We had a lot of good initiatives, which showed it wasn’t a tokenistic, purpose-driven org. We had the path to pro, it had community, it had education, but it just got killed off.
“They just let it dwindle. We had board meetings, nothing was done. The Camden unit, which was there to generate revenue and provide a hub for the community, became a zoo. They moved their other businesses in. There was no investment.”
LDN UTD founder’s attempts to regain control of the business
“I did communicate with Sheehan to scope out the feasibility of returning LDN UTD to the original shareholders, including myself, but could not obtain a warranty that, other than what I knew about, there were no further debts, or creditors owed money,” LDN UTD founder Oliver Weingarten said.
“Could I try and pick it up for a pound now? Possibly, but so much time has passed, and all the goodwill and the IP does evaporate after some time. I’m genuinely just sad how it has all ended but want to thank everyone who gave their support to LDN UTD throughout my tenure.”
Update: Following the publication of this article, EPIC.LAN MD Jon Winkle posted on X in reference to Weingarten’s above comments on debts: “Guess I must have imagined writing off the debt to us that existed at the time of the sale to the new owners then. When we tried to pursue these through the new owners they said they couldn’t pay us and they were finding there were loads more they didn’t know about that they’d inherited. But sure, poor esports org.”
Oliver Weingarten launched his own agency, Summit Sports, a year ago.
Daniel Gee declined to comment on the situation. Both Daniel Gee and James Sheehan are also involved with Pri0r1ty AI Ltd (which recently publicly listed on London’s AIM stock exchange) and Sport Media Ventures Ltd.
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.
