Nigel Sylvester is dominating 2020.
After making waves in the sports, art, and fashion worlds, the 33-year-old BMX rider has been announced as the newest member of XSET, a newly launched gaming brand that promotes inclusion and diversity within eSports.
"I’m not looking to change careers and become a pro-gamer overnight or anything like that," Sylvester said with a laugh. "But I’m super into gaming. For us, it’s about spreading the ethos of XSET and bringing different communities together."
XSET was founded by Framerate's Marco Mereu alongside former FaZe Clan executives Greg Selkoe, Clinton Sparks, and Wil Eddins, who has been friends with Sylvester for more than a decade. Though there's no doubt that their relationship helped seal the deal, Sylvester insists that he was mostly drawn to XSET's core principles.
“XSET is already the most diverse org on the planet,” co-founder and CEO Greg Selkoe said in a statement. “We looked around and saw that everyone games, but if you looked at a lot of the orgs, they had a similar look and feel: not very diverse, not a lot of women and nota lot of different races represented. We wanted to set up an org from the beginning that was addressing these problems and leading the way.”
"They spoke about the things that they want to do differently, how gaming isn’t diverse right now and they want to be the bearers of that flag,” Sylvester said. "They want to create a very diverse organization of gamers: men, women, black, white, whatever — people from all walks of life ... I’ve been able to use my platform to highlight so many different things, from cycling to BMX, to music, to art, fashion, travel, technology. I think XSET is the same exact thing. They’re highlighting all these different things with a strong emphasis on gaming."
XSET has competitive teams covering Fortnite, Valorant, Rocket League, Call of Duty: Warzone, and more. You can learn more about the gaming brand here.
