Oceanic organisation Dire Wolves has announced the incorporation of the Sydney Drop Bears and N8 Esports into its brand.
The move will see Dire Wolves, previously just a League of Legends team, evolve into a multi-discipline organisation competing in League of Legends, FIFA, Overwatch, NBA 2K, and more.
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The news comes as part of a week of significant announcements for the Dire Wolves, which has named a new management team as part of a major period of expansion. The move will see the Dire Wolves acquire the Sydney Drop Bears’ highly successful Overwatch Contenders roster, as well as N8 Esports’ FIFA players. Nate Patrick, streamer, commentator, and founder of N8 Esports will also become part of the Dire Wolves team. Further rosters are set to be revealed soon.
Teams and players belonging to both the Sydney Drop Bears and N8 Esports will now use the new branding which was unveiled by Dire Wolves yesterday.
Speaking to Esports Insider, Dave Harris, Managing Director of Guinevere Capital—previously the majority shareholder of Dire Wolves—gave more context for the decision, referring back to the creation of the Sydney Drop Bears around the time of their acquisition of Dire Wolves. “At the time, Overwatch Contenders was just about to take off in the region. We sort of used that as an opportunity to build our own brand from scratch, which was a great learning experience, just to go through that process.
“So, we created the Sydney Drop Bears as a standalone brand back then. And obviously it had some initial success winning the first three Contenders titles in the region and also being a development pipeline for global teams. I think we’ve had eight players and coaches go through from the Sydney Drop Bears into OWL teams or Academy teams. And then on the flip side, N8 Esports was the console brand that really focused on sports sims, particularly EA Sports’ FIFA, and now NBA 2K.”
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“We were never sure whether to go the Cloud9 model, where there’s a lot of teams under the one brand or more that Immortals Gaming Club model, where there’s multiple brands,” Harris continued. “But as our focus has shifted into other projects, particularly infrastructure and over in Europe, I think now that we’re putting so many more resources into Dire Wolves, it just makes sense for all those organizations to be part of that one family.
“So, effectively, we’re selling the rest of the teams to Dire Wolves and, now they’ll be able to operate with the shared resources under that one banner, that one brand, which with all the work going into it, really does make sense—for the teams themselves, and obviously for us, as we’re sort of transitioning out of the Australian team’s business.”
Jason Spiller, Owner of Dire Wolves, told Esports Insider: “What we aim to do is not only just bring them into that same brand so that we can really leverage the strength of the Dire Wolves brand across multiple titles, and really bring ourselves, into the space of the modern multidisciplinary sports organization, but also leverage the talent that we’re bringing in on the content side of the business to be able to really support all of these players to grow their individual profiles.”
Esports Insider says: This move appears to make sense for all parties. Perhaps this merger heralds a trend that will be followed by other major esports organisations who have opted into multiple brands—only time will tell.