H20 Esports Campus Amsterdam has appointed Martijn van der Craats as its new CEO & Managing Director, effective 1 June. Martijn van der Craats succeeds Matthijs Vink and Dirk Tuip, the founders of H20. After years of dedication and with various growth challenges ahead of them, it was time to hand over the baton. Dirk will focus on the growth of the campus and Matthijs will concentrate on the national and international expansion of the concept with Go!Gaming. Martijn is an experienced manager from the esports world.
In recent years, Van der Craats was involved in the development of the international Dutch/American top team Team Liquid. He brings with him important experience that will be very useful in his new position. Just like Team Liquid, H20 focuses on different target groups, education, top sports, entertainment and media.
"When I first walked into H20 a few years ago, I was already impressed with the ambition and the plans, that I may now be the captain to bring these plans further to fruition is a boyhood dream of every gamer"Van der Craats says about his new position. "This is a wonderful challenge that made me enthusiastic from the first conversations."
Matthijs Vink, interim CEO for the last few months: "We have known Martijn for quite some time, also because in his Team Liquid period he already showed involvement in our educational activities. We also noticed that he has a heart for esports. Especially during the startup of the Branchevereniging voor Esports Nederland I have had good substantive discussions with Martijn. As former top sportsmen, Dirk and I certainly see the interfaces between esports and sportsand with Martijn we get real esports knowledge. I am confident this will take us to the next level.
That esports experience, his national and international network and experience in building teams made us have a lot of confidence in Martijn. For us this is an important follow-up and growth step to build on the development of esports in The Netherlands and also to make the impact of gaming towards society clearer with content programmes."