LeagueSpot announces new scholastic esports hires

Esports and gaming education platform LeagueSpot has announced the hires of James O’Hagan as VP of Education Innovation and Samantha Anton as Senior Publishing Specialist.

The pair join the company as it looks to strengthen its position in the increasingly competitive North American scholastic esports space.

O’Hagan is a prominent scholastic esports advocate in the US and the founder of scholastic esports podcast The Academy of Esports. He brings extensive expertise in the sector, including experience building out esports programmes in US school districts.

Anton has over six years of experience in collegiate esports. Starting her journey with the University of California Irvine’s esports programme, she went on to become Chief Operating Officer at the US scholastic esports body the North America Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF).

LeagueSpot is a technology and service provider offering holistic esports programmes, primarily for schools and nonprofit groups. The white-label platform includes player registration and organisation, payments, tournament management tools and matchmaking technology.

The company’s CEO Andrew Barnett told Esports Insider that LeagueSpot has worked with YMCA, NACE Starleague, ECAC esports, amongst others, to provide technology and support services.

Opportunities in the North American scholastic esports space have been increased following Riot Games’ update to its guidelines in early June.

The updated guidelines broaden the ability to use Riot’s titles at the scholastic level, which was previously restricted by an exclusivity deal with high school esports platform PlayVS.

Andrew Barnett, LeagueSpot’s CEO, commented: “Scholastic esports continues to grow at an explosive rate and publishers like Riot Games have been making key changes to ensure educators have the freedom to leverage trustworthy partners and tools that make the most sense for their students.

“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome James and Samantha onto the team at LeagueSpot to further enhance this key area of our business.”