Nexal Gaming Company: Story of Perseverance in African Esports Ecosystem

Bakare Paul-Bernard

From a small network of gamers with a vision to a well-functioning firm managing several programmes, The Nexal Gaming Company(NGC) has grown from a small community of gaming enthusiasts to a well-structured firm in the Nigerian gaming and Esports scene whilst still retaining its vision to impact and deliver value in the scene.

The Nexal Gaming Company started in September 2019 as a community platform for gamers in Nigeria to interact, network and get up-to-date news on the happenings in the Nigerian gaming and Esports scene. We then rebranded into the Nexal Gaming Community in July 2021 to satisfy the informational, financial and networking needs of gamers in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. The NGC further rebranded from a gaming community into the Nexal Gaming Company in October 2023 to manage a portfolio of different companies in gaming with a mission to serve the gaming and Esports scene on a broader scale, all this whilst retaining the name, ‘NGC’.

Our survival and evolution in the space has been nothing short of remarkable. From humble beginnings as an ecosystem aggregator to a gaming community with over 100,000 community members to a well-structured Esports firm now driving for seed funding on the African Esports scene, it takes a lot to build and manage that kind of progress and a large part of that is down to a team of talented and passionate individuals who want to see gaming and esports win in Nigeria and Africa.

As a gaming and esports firm like no other, we focus strongly on delivering value for the gamers, the gaming communities and the ecosystem operators in the Nigerian and African esports scene. As a company, we have pitched several projects at numerous hackathons and pitch events. Some aspects of our portfolio include The NGC, which already handles our news articles, communities, data reports services, tournament organisations, consultation services and marketing programmes, ‘Esports NG’ our social networking platform, ‘Nexal Esports’ our official esports team, ‘Clutch Africa’ our esports merch and apparel corporation, ‘Nexus Hub’ for physical gaming lounges around Africa and the ‘African Esports Podcast’ (AEP) to deliver entertaining esports contents and discussions for gamers in Africa.

Still, the project which has stood out the most for us is the Esports NG platform, which is expected to serve as one of the biggest social gaming platforms in Africa when it launches in January 2024. It was a project we pitched at a Hackathon organised by ICAN and the Bank of Industry, and we emerged as one of the winners for that programme, which gives us a lot of validation for what we are building. So for Esports NG, our social gaming platform, we discovered that gamers and gaming teams do not have a platform to display and project their successes and activities in the African gaming scene, and this is a big issue because more than 55% of monetization options in gaming and Esports are tied to sponsorships and advertising, and gamers in Nigeria cannot access this due to a lack of visibility. 

Although other big players are attempting to crack this sector, we discovered that a lot of the existing platforms have not included gaming communities and ecosystem operators as part of their program plans and event platforms. As long as the big players in the scene create programmes that are not inclusive of the unique specializations of smaller esports communities, then everyone is more or less playing themselves in the space. This is why our approach to breaking out would be to work with the smaller gaming communities that are specialised and have already mastered their arts in the games they create exciting digital and physical experiences (esports events) and the communities that they manage. Being a gaming community ourselves, we already have the leverage to make this work on a large scale level.

Presently, as a company, we are one seed funding away from truly driving the disruption that many are yet to see in the ecosystem, and we believe all of this can be achieved before the start of 2024.

Our story would not be complete without the support of our present and past sponsors and partners, which include Cxmmunity Media, Carry1st, Africa Comicade, Monster Energy, the African Esports Rankings and numerous other stakeholders and partners that we have worked with and are still working with to deliver high impact value in the Nigerian and African Esports ecosystem. Our focus for the future would be on supporting other ecosystem operators like us, driving esports adoption at the university and grassroots level, as well as creating entertaining digital and physical esports experiences through amazing five-star events, all whilst activating the different projects that exist in our esports portfolio.

We believe that there is still a lot of joy to come. 

‘Life is a Game’ and We Will ‘Play it Well’ is our mantra for the NGC.

Bakare Paul-Bernard is the CTO of Nexal Gaming Company