Each year Ukie embarks on an annual hub crawl pilgrimage across the UK, educating local people and games businesses on a specific topic, asked for by our members.
This year’s tour saw Ukie and an entourage of experts travel to over 12 locations across the UK, including places such as Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff etc, with key partner Jagex hosting penultimate leg of the tour at their offices in Cambridge, and the final being in Dundee. This year’s turnout was better than ever, with the tour reaching over 600 studios/developers. Each location had a slightly different array of speakers and panellists, sharing incredibly insightful knowledge around getting investment ready.
Key tour partner Sheridans joined Ukie on at each location, educating people about setting up a business, the different types of investment and funding opportunities available whilst also outlining the pros and cons of each. The BFI also joined us on this tour to spread the word about Video Game Tax Relief (VGTR), outlining the process in order to help people understand how to make a claim. In addition to this, we also had a variety of investors and industry experts such as Oscar Clark, Phillip & Andrew Oliver at each event, affording attendees the opportunity to ask questions.
All presentations delivered during this year’s hub crawl can be found here.
In addition to the presentations, Sheridans has kindly put together a ‘Investment Ready’ toolkit, which contains a couple of useful audio files alongside some documentation. Please note that we will be releasing the toolkit in due course. The toolkit provides an overview of ‘getting your games business investor-ready’ and information about related areas, such as types of investment. So, if you are looking to take your games business to the next level and seek external funding, undertaking the steps set out in this toolkit and considering the points it raises could help to put you in a good position to help you to meet your funding goals.
This toolkit also includes an overview of the different types of investment, funding and grants available, as well as how the investor due diligence process works (at a high-level) and highlights some areas and common pitfalls to think about before you seek investment.
Ukie would like to thank key sponsors Jagex and Sheridans for helping to support this year’s tour. Without this support it would have been difficult to reach as many locations and people. We would also like to thank the speakers and panellists for taking part and for providing incredible insight and knowledge to attendees.
If you would like to get involved in our next Hub Crawl tour, due to kick off in December, then please reach out to Leon.