Mastercard is the first global partner of League of Legends

Mastercard has signed a multi-year partnership agreement with Riot Games to be the first exclusive worldwide payment services partner for the League of Legends (LoL) global esports events. This is the first global brand partner of League of Legends. The deal includes the three annual World LoL Esports tournaments, the Mid-Season Invitational, the World Championship and the All-Star. Mastercard will develop special benefits in the game for fans who use their Mastercard, as well as special ticketing programs and offers for fans before live event tournaments. The company also hopes to launch a LoL brand credit card collection in the coming months.

"It's a historic deal for us, and I think the industry as a whole," said Naz Aletaha, Head of Global Sport Partnerships at Riot Games.

"This is the first major entry of a global sports brand, so we had to look at all aspects, implications and consequences," said Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard's marketing director. . "One of the most important things for us was the level of authenticity with which we had to intervene. League of Legends was one of the areas where we could participate and organize authentic experiences. "

(The new global sponsorship deal comes at a time when Riot Games could use good news.) In August, after eight months of investigation, Kotaku published an article detailing a sexist corporate culture that sparked the internal investigation As was the case last week, the new reports described Riot Games' efforts as inadequate, we contacted Riot Games and Mastercard for comments, but we did not receive a response from the press. Variety, a representative from Riot Games declined to comment on a potential action for specific employees, but stressed that the company was taking the situation seriously: "To be clear, our top priority in all cases is the well-being of all rioters involved. the integrity of the investigation. ")

Sports are very different from more traditional sports and not just because players are sitting and watching a screen. There are a multitude of games and competitions to choose from. And while LoL is one of the world's biggest esports competitions, filling stadiums and drawing millions of spectators online, Rajamannar says his size is not the only consideration. "On the one hand, they have a huge scale – 100 million players. Secondly, for one event, the world championships, they had 80 million unique viewers. It's a staggering number, "he says. "Third, it has an important component of Generation Y, essential for the future of any business. Finally, we had to be in an area where there was not a lot of graphic violence. This is a fantastic game, all about team work and sportsmanship. "

Mastercard hopes that working with Riot on experiences such as looking exclusively at world championship rehearsals or VIP seats to watch an event with a professional player will spark fans' enthusiasm for the company's involvement.

"Whenever we look at one aspect of sponsorship, we look at the impact at three levels," says Rajamannar. The first is the impact of the brand. Secondly, the impact on the company: will it increase the activities in an evolutionary and measurable way? And third, does it give the brand a competitive advantage? "Different referrals provide different levels of each of these settings. For this occasion, it was pretty good on all three levels. "

Five years ago, Mastercard began to re-evaluate its overall marketing strategy. What they discovered is that people are increasingly attracted to the experiences and that overcoming the mess and impacting consumers through traditional advertising and advertising would not be the wave from the future. "Advertising is dead in its present form," says Rajamannar. "The future is all about creating stories, which creates and organizes experiences for customers and consumers alike. They tell about these experiences, tell their own stories and the brand is subtly integrated into these stories. As opposed to throwing messages at our customers. "

Aletaha says that the agreement adds an incredible boost to the trajectory of Riot Games. "The Mastercard is obviously a non-endemic brand in the gaming space, but it has always supported world-class sports and entertainment, such as Major League Baseball, Champions League and Grammys," she said. "For them, recognizing esports as their next major addition to the list is a testament to what we have built."