In 2017, Infamous Gaming became the first South American team to qualify for The International qualification, one of the most prestigious esports tournaments. This year, they returned to compete for the Aegis fight. Being able to compete at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in The International makes company more interested in becoming a sponsor. Not surprisingly, The International is always able to attract many spectators. This year, two Twitch channels that broadcast The International – one in English and one in Russian – received a total duration of watching over 12 million hours.
One of the new sponsors obtained by Infamous is Cifrut, a beverage brand under AJE Group, a multinational company that makes, distributes and sells bottled drinks. According to the R3PREZ3NT esports agency, Cifrut wants its brand to appear in the Infamous jersey for one month. In addition, Infamous was also asked to promote the beverage brand on their social media. While from Cifrut, they will make special beverage packaging that features Infamous.
Cifrut is not the only brand that is interested in becoming an Infamous sponsor. Antivirus company ESET is also a sponsor of Infamous. Like Cifrut, ESET wants its brand to appear on the team jersey and its brand is promoted on social media Infamous. The esports team can also provide referrals for fans who are interested in buying ESET products. Prior to this, several companies that had supported Infamous included HyperX, OMEN by HP, and Microsoft Windows.
“The International is very important for us, because we get a lot of connections and make lots of contracts, both for this tournament and in the future,” Infamous Gaming owner and founder Christian Roque was quoted as saying by the Esports Observer. “We have a media content plan for this tournament with the aim of ensuring that our sponsors are satisfied and they get maximum exposure.”
Lately, more and more companies are interested in sponsoring the esports team. It’s not just technology-related companies that are interested in sponsoring the esports team, but also non-endemic brands, ranging from beverage brands to financial service providers. This year, the value of non-endemic brand sponsorship this year is up 13 percent compared to last year. And indeed more and more non-endemic brands want to be sponsors of the esports team, including in Indonesia. This can be seen from the decision of the Two Rabbits who support EVOS Esports and RRQ, Fore Coffee which sponsors ONIC, and the collaboration between Genflix and Livestock and Aerowolf.
Typically, a brand wants to sponsor the esports team because they want to get closer to the esports audience, as Honda does. The International is the World Cup for Dota 2. Of course, there are also many viewers. According to data from The Esports Observer, the two channels that broadcast The International dominated the top channel position on Twitch last week. The channel that broadcasts the Dota 2 tournament in English gets a total duration of watching for 16 million hours, while the channel in Russian gets 12 million hours. As you can see in the graph below, these two channels get much higher watch time than the third most popular channel.
One reason why The International is attracting the attention of many people is because of the huge prize. This year, the total prize offered is US $ 34 million. OG, the team that won The International this year, can bring home US $ 15.6 million. That means, each OG team player gets around US3.1 million, bigger than the athlete who won Wimbledon. In comparison, Novak Djokovic and Simona Halep, who won Wimbledon, “only” took home US $ 2.9 million. From year to year, the total prize of The International continues to rise. That can happen because they use crowdfunding fundraising methods.
