League of Legends 2022 Global Finals are still in full swing. In the first round of the group stage, the LPL region achieved relatively good results.
As of October 14, JDG and RNG teams stabilized in Group B and Group D with a score of 3-0, while EDG once again lost to Team T1 in today's three innings, ranking second in Group A with a score of 4-2. Compared with the TES team's promotion situation, the 1-2 score made many viewers worried about it.
With the smooth progress of the World Championship, the popularity of the event is also increasing. In addition to presenting exciting event content, this World Championship has also delivered a good answer in its commercial performance.
In this article, Gyro Esports conducted a comprehensive inventory of the League of Legends S12 events and the commercial sponsorships of clubs in major competition areas, and will analyze what changes and trends have been presented in the League of Legends S events at the commercial level.
1
S competition brand sponsorship is diversified, marketing gameplay is constantly upgraded
Gyro e-sports drawing: Data source: League of Legends official website
According to the data released by the League of Legends event, S12 has won 12 brand sponsorships, which are divided into three different levels, including 3 official partners in China, 6 global partners, and 2 special partners in China. Among them, City Travel, Tiffany, OnePlus Mobile, and AWS are the new brands this year.
From the perspective of the number of brand sponsorships, the growth services of brand sponsorship in League of Legends S match have become stable. However, there have been considerable changes in the brand sponsorship list, which can be roughly divided into two categories: long-term cooperation and short-term cooperation.
is first of all a short-term cooperation brand, including Suning.com, Pudong Development Bank, Nut Projection, Lehe, and Logitech. After sponsoring the S10 event, it did not choose to renew the contract. Brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Moslian, JD.com, Intel, and Mastercard tend to operate for long-term purposes and are deeply bound to the event.
Gyro Esports believes that the big reason for this situation is that the demands of major brands are different. For example, food and beauty brands including Moslian and Lancome can be exposed through the huge traffic of the event and intuitively transformed into returns of interests. Automobile, luxury goods, and even 3C hardware and household appliances require long-term operation and maintain communication channels with young people through e-sports, so as to achieve the goal of cultivating potential consumers.
In addition, the venue of the event also has a significant impact on brand sponsorship. The S10 held in Shanghai attracted 6 domestic brand sponsorships in the "Special Partner of China", while this data is only 2 in S11 and S12. The reason is largely related to the tone of the brand. For example, brands such as Pudong Development Bank and Nut Projection that sponsor S10 events are more focused on exploring consumer audiences for the Chinese market. On the contrary, there are more global partners in events held in North America and Europe.
From the perspective of sponsored brands, the brand sponsorship of "drinks" and "hardware peripherals" has decreased significantly, and in previous e-sports events, these two categories were the main brand types of sponsorship.
However, this also shows that e-sports brand sponsorship is becoming increasingly diversified. For example, brands targeting women's consumption have become the norm in marketing in the e-sports field, such as Lancome and Tiffany who sponsor this S competition. Secondly, the service type and brand sponsorship in the digital industry have been significantly improved, such as Tongcheng Travel and AWS (Amazon Cloud) Cisco (network solution provider) in this S competition.
It is also worth noting that the marketing gameplay between events and brands is also being upgraded and updated. At the start of the S12, Mercedes-Benz and Riot released their first virtual concept car. In addition to being shown in the theme song MV of the League of Legends Global Finals, Mercedes-Benz also launched a car-machine interface with the theme of League of Legends.
luxury sponsor brand Tiffany reached a cooperation with Riot to reshape the championship trophy for the S12 Global Finals.This is not the first time the two sides have cooperated. Previously, on the 10th anniversary of the China League of Legends, both sides reshaped the championship trophy Silver Dragon Cup for the LPL region.
2
13 Started to sponsor a brand, e-sports has become a new position in brand marketing
Gyro E-sports statistics and mapping: Data source: Club official website, Twitter, Weibo, Wikipedia
According to public information in the market, Gyro E-sports has sorted out 214 brand sponsorships among 24 teams in 11 competition areas, and is mainly concentrated in four competition areas. Among them, the LPL area starts at 47, the LCK area starts at 38, the LEC area starts at 37, and the LCS area starts at 30. The EDG team in the LPL region is the team with the most sponsorship of brands in the four major regions, with a total of 16 brands sponsoring it.
However, the most brand sponsorship received in this S event was not the LPL team, but the DFM team in the Japanese LJL competition area. Although it did not break through the group stage, 21 brands sponsored this team, and the brand logo was filled with DFM players' uniforms. The reason why
can receive a lot of brand sponsorship is on the one hand due to the relaxation of Japanese e-sports. For example, the establishment of the Japanese e-sports alliance JESU, issuing e-sports player licenses, and breaking the regulation that e-sports events cannot exceed 100,000 yen (less than 6,000 RMB). But on the one hand, it is due to the immaturity of DFM business. Previously, industry personnel revealed that the brand LOGO investment of DFM team uniforms started at 1.2 million yen, equivalent to only 80,000 yuan. This is the key to DFM’s ability to receive so much brand sponsorship.
Gyro e-sports statistics and graphics: sponsored brand type analysis
From the perspective of brand type, among which 3C hardware and peripherals closely related to e-sports are still the most active sponsored brands, followed by beverages, clothing, automobiles and computer brands.
Among the 214 sponsorships, there were 34 sponsorships for 3C hardware, with 29 participating brands; 18 sponsorships for peripheral brands, with 6 participating brands, among which Logitech has the highest participation, with 8 participating brands; 15 sponsorships for beverage brands, with 8 participating brands, with 8 participating brands, with Red Bull's sponsorships the most extensive, with 6 e-sports clubs.
In addition to sponsorship, the brand is also integrating with e-sports through different forms. Taking Red Bull as an example, as one of the earliest functional beverage brands to deploy e-sports, Red Bull has also launched third-party title events and various offline e-sports events.
In addition, we can see that brands sponsoring the e-sports industry are becoming more and more diversified, involving a total of 44 different fields. Brands in some fields have also been increasing their marketing efforts in e-sports in recent years, such as fast-moving consumer goods, finance, medical and health care, etc.
Fast-moving consumer goods brands represented by beverages, food and beer have always been the main force in sports competition marketing. With the increase in the requirements of e-sports users for offline viewing and watching the game, fast-moving consumer goods brands that have sponsored sports tracks in the past have been accelerating their tilt towards the e-sports market, and e-sports has become a new marketing base for these brands.
The financial field has also increased its layout in the e-sports field in recent years. According to data from Gyro E-sports statistics, there are 13 sponsorships for financial brands, of which 6 are banks. Previously, Gyro Esports analyzed that the financial industry's layout of e-sports is largely aimed at the future consumer groups of finance. The "2022 2000/90s Financial Consumption Behavior Insight Report" shows that nearly two-thirds of 1990s and 2000s have had credit card installment consumption behavior, and most of them have investment and financial management habits. By sponsoring e-sports, brands in the financial industry will be able to help them quickly cover young consumer groups, export their brand values and concepts, and cultivate future consumer groups.
In addition, brands in the medical and health field have also begun to become active in the e-sports industry. Among the data statistics of Gyro Esports, there are 7 sponsors involving "medical health". And data show that 75% of e-sports players have occupational diseases of varying degrees, and the average retirement age is only 24 years old.Previously, topics related to the health of e-sports athletes such as "e-sports players have several times more strain than white-collar workers" have frequently appeared on the Internet. E-sports needs to be improved at the health level, and it has begun to promote more and more healthy brands to begin to make layouts in the e-sports industry.
TES cooperates with United Family Medical
Esports, as an emerging model of the digital sports industry, in addition to giving full play to its sports attributes, it has also become a key investment in new technologies such as cryptocurrency, NFT, metaverse, and cloud computing. Through inventory, we can see that cloud service platforms including AWS, as well as digital collections, metaverse and other platforms are actively seeking cooperation with e-sports.
The reason is that the online attributes of e-sports are easier to integrate technologies from emerging industries, such as cooperating with blockchain platforms and NFT platforms to launch cryptocurrencies and NFT collections, or linking cloud service platforms to optimize the viewing experience, etc. The digital industry launches joint digital products by linking e-sports clubs or events, and then converts e-sports traffic to its own platform. In addition, the development of cryptocurrencies and NFTs is also regarded as one of the future marketing channels for e-sports clubs.
Riot Game establishes cooperation with Amazon cloud service AWS
Conclusion:
Whether integrating more industries to broaden their own boundaries or constantly upgrading the form of cooperation, we can see from it that the business capabilities of League of Legends are still in a steady upward trend. In addition, the continuous amplification of the boundaries of the League of Legends business ecosystem and the entry of professional and standardized operations of clubs in major competition areas will further enhance its commercial value.
