by in In the world of sports, there is one field that has shown extraordinary growth over the last few years – eSports. From being distinctly niche events, video games tournaments have gone stratospheric. It’s all a very far cry from the first-ever official event held back in 1972 when the first prize was a subscription to the music magazine Rolling Stone.
Now players compete for seven-figure sums and are watched by millions of people all over the world. So it’s no big surprise that many sponsors, including ones as different as insurance companies and car manufacturers, are coming on board.
One sector that has yet to announce any big deals is the online casino industry. Although some platforms already use some very powerful marketing techniques including no deposit casino bonuses allowing free play, this could prove to be another very effective tool. Admittedly, It would work in a very different way to the no deposit bonuses that have an immediate appeal. That is because, as soon as players sign up for a casino offering these, they can take advantage whether their preferred game is roulette, blackjack or even slots.
Sponsorship, on the other hand, serves more as a brand-building exercise, getting the particular online casino’s name out there in front of an audience that is predominantly male and in their mid-20s.
There are several reasons why there would be a particular synergy between the sector and eSports, making it all the more surprising that any significant partnerships are yet to develop. For a start, online casinos succeed by embracing the new and exciting. This may mean always offering the newest slots games or the most advanced versions of casino games, or it might be associating with modern phenomena like eSports.
Then there are the already well-established links between the online casino and video gaming industries in the ways that their games are created and developed. There are also a number of precedents where online casinos have discovered that the sponsorship of both events like poker tournaments and individual teams can be a very successful way of promoting themselves.
By becoming more involved in eSports, they may be able to take this even further still. After all, if people like watching others play video games, perhaps they would also like to watch others play casino games. This could even allow the spectators to bet on the outcome of the games themselves.
It’s also becoming more and more common for casinos to hold slots tournaments with players starting with a fixed amount of stake money. The winner is the player who has been lucky enough to win the most within a strict time limit. If not the main event, these could still be entertaining interludes to punctuate sponsored eSports tournaments.
And it’s not as if there wasn’t plenty of help and advice out there for anyone looking to attract eSports sponsorship. So maybe, before long, both teams and tournaments may come knocking at the doors of the bigger names in the online casino industry with an offer they just can’t ignore.
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