Manchester City together with Puma, launched a special esports jersey for the upcoming 20/21 season. The design of the jersey is arguably inspired by the Manchester City team’s third jersey, which has a graphic graffiti like a batik cloth. Quoting from local media, this jersey is only a start. Puma is rumored to be continuing this trend, by providing other products about esports throughout the 2020-2021 season.
Later, the special esports jersey from the Manchester City team will be worn by two FIFA esports players from that team, namely Shaun Springette “Shellzz” and Ryan Pessoa. Not only that, the jersey will also be used by their esports teams in China and South Korea, who compete in the FIFA Online game.
The official Manchester City release written by Rob Pollard says “The Manchester City esports jersey celebrates the city’s rich music and fashion culture (Manchester). The jersey uses the Paisley motif created for Manchester City, which features the Manchester City logo on it. The logo symbolizes the ‘Mod’ era around the 1960s, and the ‘Brit Pop’ era in the 1990s, which has influenced music and fashion culture in Manchester for generations. “
Manchester City is arguably one of the most active soccer clubs in the realm of esports. In June 2020, they even said the Man City FIFA 20 Cup, which was held in Singapore, and had a total prize pool of 20 million rupiah. Not only that, Manchester City also had a co-branding collaboration with one of the well-known esports organizations from the United States, FaZe Clan. In this collaboration, Manchester City and FaZe Clan together create their merchandise designs and video content that attracts the interest of the audience.
Apart from Manchester City, another football club that is no less active in the realm of esports might be Paris Saint-Germain. The French club sponsored the RRQ Mobile Legends team at the beginning of 2019. The last time PSG also sponsored the League of Legends team from Hong Kong, namely Talon Esports, as an effort for the soccer team to get a stage in the 2020 League of Legends World Championship.
Seeing this, it seems like the soccer club is getting closer to esports. Even in a local context, there is IFeL, Zeus Gaming collaborations with local football clubs to create a virtual football league. It seems that football clubs are increasingly believing in esports as one of the future fields of competition.
