It can’t be very often that an international leisure operator choses to open its second UK venue – and first outside London – in Coventry. But that is exactly what Wanyoo, Asia’s largest e-gaming café operator, has done.

The e-sports operator – whose cafés enable people to play video games competitively in a social setting and which has more than 1,000 venues across China as well as in Australia, the US, Canada and Singapore – has taken a 3,900 sq ft unit at Cathedral Lanes in Coventry city centre on a 15-year lease.

Shearer Property Group (SPG) has spent £25m turning Cathedral Lanes – a secondary, poorly performing shopping centre with an uncertain future – into a leisure destination designed to meet the need for an improved food and beverage and leisure offering in the city.