This week in Chinese esports: LoL Worlds, Tencent Esports

As part of our partnership with China Electronic Athletics, we’re now bringing you the biggest headlines from the esports industry in China every week. This week in Chinese esports includes multiple partnerships for LoL Worlds, the WUCG Sanya Esports Festival, and Tencent Esports Open Class.

We also have a twice-weekly newsletter that informs you of every significant happening in the business and industry side of esports, the ESI Dispatch, please feel free to subscribe here.

Brands partner with Chinese teams for LoL Worlds

On Oct. 8th, Invictus Gaming (IG) announced its partnership with Mirinda, launching limited-edition gift boxes to cheer for Invictus Gaming during the League of Legends World Championship. IG’s other partner Chevrolet also launched limited-edition Tracker x IG cars. Besides the deals announced by IG, another Chinese LoL team FunPlusPhoenix (FPX) announced its global partnership deal with Chinese mobile phone brand OPPO.

China Electronic Athletics says: From TI9 to this year’s Worlds, there are have been plenty of companies getting involved at the start of a big event. For Valve and Riot Games, this means that their systems established over the years are finally coming into effect. Although the partners of those non-endemic brands are teams, the time of announcing such partnerships is proving the influence of these tournaments.

As the key stakeholders in tournament systems, esports teams should consider the methods and cost of the marketing focus created by event organisers during the whole promotion process. To be recognized by non-endemic brands and consumers, esports teams need to come up with more practical plans. Obviously, news and press conferences are far from enough.

The press of 2019 WUCG Sanya Esports Festival held in Sanya

The press portion of World University Cyber Games (WUCG) Sanya Esports Festival was held in Sanya, Hainan Province. WUCG will be held on December 3rd-7th with  university esports teams from more than 20 countries participating in the World Grand Finals.

China Electronic Athletics says: If university leagues still follow the business model of the commercial sports league, we believe they should have brands like KFC  on board to push this kind of marketing campaign.  Not only WUCG, but also many domestic university leagues have given up the focus on the competition between different universities. These leagues will gradually lose the attention of university students because they can no longer provide students with a platform to communicate and get to know each other through esports.

First Chinese original esports open class will be launched on October 25th

Tencent Esports announced an exclusive domestic original esports open class. The first class will be broadcast on Tencent Sports and Tencent Video on October 25th.

17 guests from esports and traditional sports will attend the open class to share their esports experiences, the themes of ‘persistence,’ ‘breakthrough’, ‘responsibility,’ and ‘future,’ audiences will allow those who watch to learn more about the development process of Chinese esports.

China Electronic Athletics says: When esports gets hyped on social media and attracts more and more attention from the public, it is meaningful to launch this kind of program. Although we are not sure the first class can be a bridge to the public or not, it is evident that esports needs to actively reach out more demographics rather than waiting for others to find esports themselves.

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

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