This week in Chinese esports: LPL All-Stars, Li-Ning

As part of our partnership with China Electronic Athletics, we’re bringing you the biggest headlines from the esports industry in China every week. This week in Chinese esports saw the LPL All-Stars event announce its location and Li-Ning enter a partnership with Knives Out.

LPL All-Stars event announced to be held in Hainan

TJ Sports announced the launch of the 2019 LPL All-Stars event, which will be held at the League of Legends 8th anniversary celebration. The All-Stars event will be held in Hainan from November 30th to December 1st.

In June, Hainan Province published several supportive policies to develop its local esports industry. The policies included setting up a 1 billion RMB (£110 million) fund to encourage esports companies to launch projects in the area.

China Electronic Athletics says: Currently, local governments are publishing supportive policies to attract esports companies and launch esports tournaments. For these governments, developing a local esports culture is necessary for them to introduce or launch esports tournaments.

Although LPL All-Stars is a brand new esports event, the attendees from top LPL teams have ensured a high quality. With Hainan seizing this opportunity to combine local esports facilities with a prominent event, it’ll be interesting to see whether this kind of collaboration can attract more investments in Hainan or launch long-term partnerships to develop esports derivatives.

Li-Ning launches the cross-border partnership with Knives Out

On November 12th, NetEase announced a partnership with Chinese sports apparel company Li-Ning. Popular apparel from Li-Ning will be translated as skins in NetEase’s mobile game Knives Out as a result of the deal.

China Electronic Athletics says: It’s common to see apparel brands launch virtual apparel as skins in esports games at this point. For example, Adidas has partnered with Chinese mobile game Honor of Kings and Bape has partnered with PUBG Mobile.

Besides launching virtual skins in-game, they also jointly produced some real-life products. From a marketing perspective to evaluate this kind of partnership, it appears to be an effective approach for popular apparel companies to promote their brands due to esports’ demographic.

We may need to think that whether the game itself or its derivatives can bring new meaningful benefits for these non-endemic brands. Maybe that is the next step for esports practitioners to explore.

Contact China Electronic Athletics:
Wechat public account: china_ea
Contact Name: Xiang Shi
Email: [email protected]

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