Coming off a championship for Overwatch League’s stage four, the LA Valiant are now focusing on the playoffs for season one, courtesy of a “Live the Legacy” campaign. The OWL squad is teaming up with fellow city teams the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and MLS’ Los Angeles Galaxy to release co-branded merchandise, ticket specials for watch parties, promotional support, and fan experiences. The playoffs run July 11-21.
Counter Logic Gaming inked a partnership with high-speed internet provider Spectrum, which will now deliver Fiber Optic Internet service to the CLG performance center and become a presenting partner of the venue’s Spectrum Gaming Lounge. Spectrum will also be showcased on CLG social media channels and live streams.
Public relations, events, sports marketing and content marketing agency KemperLesnik is now adding esports to its suite of business services. The agency previously worked with Riot Games on its 2018 League of Legends College Championship. The agency provided media relations, on-site media operations support and player media training. KemperLesnik’s esports division will produce esports events, connect would-be sponsors with esports assets, consult with esports game developers and lead brand activation for esports sponsors.
HyperX tied up a deal with Shroud, the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Twitch streamer with the No. 2 highest subscribed Twitch channel. He will join the HyperX brand ambassador team using HyperX gaming headsets, keyboards, mice, and mouse pad accessories during his streaming sessions. As an ambassador, Shroud will include HyperX branding on his Twitch stream, participate in video content creation and make public appearances at gaming events and expos. He will also lend HyperX his unique gaming expertise, acting as a consultant for future products within the mouse category.
Evolved Talent Agency, an agency that focuses on repping esports players and content creators, is teaming up with ICM Partners in a joint venture partnership that will see ICM Partners provide “ancillary opportunities and strategies” for clients of Evolved, according to Variety.
Comcast and Activision entered a partnership to offer a chance to play the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Multiplayer before its official release October 12. “This year, Xfinity has elevated the consumer experience by offering Call of Duty fans a chance to play Black Ops 4 through the Xfinity store sweepstakes before its official release on October 12,” said Tyler Michaud, Vice President, Product Management at Activision. “Gamers will get a sneak peek at the engaging gameplay and depth of content that makes Black Ops 4 a blast to play together with your friends, and we thank Xfinity for the continued support in celebrating gamers throughout the U.S.”
Last week, FanAI looked at how OWL sponsors have benefitted from their relationship with the league. This week FanAI analyzed how many of a sponsor’s followers became interested in the Overwatch League, as a proportion of the sponsors’ own initial followings, to understand the brand fit between the league and those sponsors.
Sour Patch Kids, a new non-endemic sponsor provided stellar proportional gains while Toyota’s 724K all-encompassing follower base did not have as much interest. Omen by HP’s 63K followers saw the top percentile crossover, but the actual follower increase is lower than that of computing juggernaut Intel because of Intel’s much larger 4.85M follower base.
Source: Source: FanAI.io
The CS:GO Asia Championships 2018 from Shanghai this week saw PGL implement its new Augmented Reality features for CS:GO broadcasts. Perfect World partnered with PGL to offer the English broadcast of the event on Twitch, serving AR in-game 3D graphics produced with in-house tools. “We’ve invested a lot of time and resources in order to improve the viewer experience, with the addition of in-game Augmented Reality graphics,” says Sebastian Honciuc, main show producer.
GAMURS raised $2.2 million in funding from angel investors and Allium Capital. The Esports media network plans to utilize the new influx of capital to target a series of initiatives, including the expansion of Dot Esports, the website it operates for coverage of competitive gaming.
GINX Esports TV announced a new show dedicated to Fighting Games, titled The DOJO. Presented by Samad Abdessadki, aka Damascus, the new production is the first series dedicated to “versus fighting” on GINX Esports TV, a category focusing on one-on-one combats between players. The six-part series will offer weekly episodes each Tuesday on GINX Esports TV.
Newzoo revealed its annual Global Games Market Report to subscribers, stating that there are now more than 2.3 billion active gamers in the world this year which saw 46 percent spend money on games. The games market will reach $137.9 billion in 2018, with digital revenues accounting for 91% of the market, For the first time, mobile gaming will contribute more than half of all revenues, with smartphone and tablet gaming growing 25.5 percent year-on-year to $70.3 billion.
Twitter wrapped up its E3 coverage with a blog post detailing the most-discussed games from this year’s festivities. Overall, there were nearly 15 million #E3 related Tweets last week and leading the pack among newly-announced games was Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, followed by Kingdom Hearts 3, Fallout 76, The Last of Us, and Death Stranding.
PUBG Corp reports that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has now sold more than 50 million units combined on PC and Xbox One. Combined with the players of PUBG Mobile, there are now over 500 million registered players for the game worldwide with more than 87 million people playing PUBG every day across all platforms, according to the company. “We’re genuinely humbled by PUBG’s ongoing success and growth, and we’re incredibly optimistic about the game’s future,” PUBG Corp said in a blog post. “We’re going to keep working on new content and improvements for all versions of the game. We know there’s still so much we can do to make PUBG a better game for our players. Thanks so much to all of you for joining us on this wild ride.”
A new report by Sensor Tower states that Fortnite now lays claim to more than $100 million in its first three months of availability on iOS platforms as a mobile game.
Razer reportedly led a $4.4 million round of investments into Australian-based company Esports Mogul. The org oversees the Mogul Arena platform which organizes tournaments for games like Dota 2, CS:GO, Vainglory and League of Legends and will use the money to further develop Mogul Arena.
Becker College detailed plans to add a varsity esports program with League of Legends serving as the inaugural title. Becker becomes the first college in Massachusetts to offer scholarships to varsity esports student-athletes.
Activision Blizzard named Jack Harari as its new VP of International Partnerships. Harari joins from the NBA where he served as associate VP of international business development and global partnerships.
