The impact of eSports sponsorship on brands

The world of electronic sports, or eSports, has seen explosive growth in recent years, becoming a multi-billion dollar global industry. This phenomenon has not only transformed the way video games are perceived, but has also opened up new opportunities for brands.

This topic is what the article written by Amal Elasri Ejjaberi, member of the Management & eLearning (MeL) research group, together with Sergio Rodríguez Rodríguez and Pilar Aparicio Chueca, in the Journal of Physical Education and Sport in 2020, deals with.

Objective and methodology

The objective of this article is to investigate the effect that eSports sponsorship has on the health of a brand that sponsors a competition. The field work was carried out through a questionnaire distributed among the population that uses the Internet, differentiating between children in the age range of 8 to 14 years and young people between 15 and 25 years, with a total of 1,619 responses. The interviews were distributed randomly throughout Spain among the population that uses the Internet.

Results and conclusions

The results presented show how the sponsorship of an eSports league has had a very positive effect on the sponsoring brand at two levels. First, the brand funnel is stronger among those who know the competition than those who don’t. In most waves, respondents know the brand better, have tried it more times and have made it their leading brand, so they are more aware of the communication actions of the sponsoring brand.

Secondly, the brand image is also reinforced. Those who claim to know about sponsored eSports competition are better at characterizing the brand. This result is of interest to the brand, since it is a way to measure the return on investment (ROI) in sponsorship in the world of eSports.

Another interesting result is that the maximum level of brand awareness and advertising awareness is reached when the brand has a communication campaign developed on television. This means that even though television consumption among the brand’s target audience is lower than average, when the brand has an ad-based television campaign, the brand’s results improve.

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