“The name Axolotl was the idea of a friend. During the creation of the brand kept talking about this very particular salamander. The axolotl lends itself perfectly as a mascot, as well as being implicitly a message, since it is an endangered animal, very important in the medical field “: this is how the team manager, Lorenzo Passalacqua, told us how a strange Mexican salamander stylized both became the symbol of the Axolotls, an esports team competing in the League of Legends, Rainbow Six Siege and Valorant specialties.
The team was born from an idea of Passalacqua e Tommaso Dorigo: “The interventions of HSL Esports and Yazi Investments were fundamental, the latter to give shape to the project, making available its experience in the implementation and managerial management together with the competence and experience of HSL in the export sector”. Yet Passalacqua: “We are a very young organization and between the board and the employees we have an average age of 20-25 years”.
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Axolotls stand out from other Italian teams because of their creation try to combine export with environmental protection: “From a practical point of view it is much more complex to make than we thought, but not impossible. Having been born for a year, the first thing to do was to be able to win and organize the staff of the internal group. Now we are ready to finalize some projects we had in the pipeline. And the first is the creation of an Axolotl forest ”, explained the brand manager, Tommaso Sacchini. Thanks to Treedom, an ecommerce platform that allows anyone to plant trees in various countries around the world, the team plans to create a virtual Axolotl forest where, every time they win a game, a tree will be planted, both virtual and in countries in emergency of deforestation, in an ethical and supportive way.
In addition to sending eco-awareness messages in nearly every post from the team, all of their current merchandising is produced with environmentally sustainable materials and processes, too. their stand present at the last Milan Games Week was conceived in such a way as to have the least possible impact of energy and material waste: “We immediately tried to involve non-profit organizations in initiatives and tournaments where we could donate the proceeds to charity, and unexpectedly we found many closed doors and Jurassic construction times. We are still waiting”, Sacchini explained to us.
Among the major difficulties present on the ecological path of the Axolotls is that linked to find a sponsor that reflects the green principles of the team: “Not as simple as we imagined, but to be sponsored by a large company with little attention to the environment it would clearly be a contradiction. But also finding a non-profit association with which to collaborate is much more complex than expected ”, Sacchini told us again.
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Despite the difficulties, the Axolotls continue to communicate theirs filosofia green to all the realities that face the world of virtual sports: “Not only to the numerous and big brands that are starting to take an interest in esports, but also to other teams and above all to players and spectators, we want to convey the message that the planet is in game and we can help save it by playing. We want to grow both from a sporting and a human point of view, to commit ourselves to collaborate to create the world of the future, a world where technology, people and the environment are in harmony and balance – added Sacchini – For this reason, one of the dreams in the drawer is to organize zero impact live tournaments, which produce zero carbon dioxide emissions, and therefore, as far as possible, do not have a negative impact on the ecosystem “.
If it is difficult to think of the video game as a tool for ecological awareness, it should be remembered that the export teams are made up of young and very young people, like the Axolotl. And thanks to their dreams and their commitment a real change, not only in their environment, is possible.