2022 was an exciting year for WYLDE! This past year, we made a huge impact in the esports scene with Usain Bolt coming on board, we entered VALORANT, found great success through our commitment to Rainbow Six Siege, launched amazing partnerships with Virgin Media Ireland & Digicel, and saw great success though our Creator Academy with our content creator Drku reaching 1 million followers on TikTok.
Our biggest achievement in gaming to date, was qualifying for Gamers8, our first international event, with our Rainbow Six Siege roster by finishing 1st in Gamers Without Borders: Europe. By beating Rogue, Heroic and Victus we secured $250,000 for the charity of our choice: Unicef, and our tickets to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We had shaped this roster with the pickups of tier 1 talent in AceeZ and Korey, as well as young talent in Caneo who would really show the world what he’s capable by being the most impactful player at Gamers8! We knocked over the titans of Spacestation Gaming and Team Liquid at this event, leaving with a 3rd place finish.
This fan-favorite roster would then go on to wrap up GSA, with a 1st place finish, taking home the trophy. However, they would not quite manage to win it all in 2022, as we were sadly knocked out of European Challenger League by Dunlimited in the quarterfinals, a team which would go on win the whole event.
In early 2022, we expanded into the Valorant scene. We entered VRL: France with a promising roster, a mix of young talent and hard experience. This roster fell short of our expectations by finishing 6th in groups, but we had learned from mistakes and our rebuild for the second split looked far more promising. After a second split of extremely high highs, but just as low lows, we sadly did not manage to achieve playoffs. We unfortunately didn’t get selected by Riot to be a part of the franchised league, and so, with full faith that our amazingly talented roster had the potential to play on the big stage, we allowed each one to explore other opportunities.
In addition to WYLDE’s immense efforts in game, we were given amazing opportunities to partner with Virgin Media Ireland and Digicel through FIFA. We ran a tournament with Digicel in search of Jamaica’s best FIFA player, which was a high success and big highlight for Jamaican esports. Our partnership with Virgin Media saw many brilliant moments, with billboards of our players Tyrone Ryan and Ciaran Walsh popping up all over Ireland, and a take-over of Turner’s Cross stadium for ‘Bring Your A-Game for Ireland’, a livestreamed faceoff between our players, and Irish football legends David Meyler and Stephanie Roche! The event was commentated live by another great Irish footballer, Damien Delaney and popular online commentator Darren Gibson.
Coming into 2023, WYLDE remains committed to Rocket League, where we plan to announce our roster in the first month of the new year! Although the search for a new roster has been difficult with multiple tier 1 organisations entering the Rocket League scene, we believe we’ve identified a group of young players with the motivation and drive to make it to the top with the right time, coaching and structure put around them.
2022 was an incredible year for growth at WYLDE, and we believe 2023 will be even better!