Overwatch League franchise Philadelphia Fusion has signed a sponsorship deal with telecommunications equipment provider ARRIS. The company’s logo will appear on the front-left shoulder of Fusion players’ jerseys during the Overwatch League’s second season, which starts Feb. 14.
The Fusion are one of the original 12 franchises that joined the Overwatch League, and are owned by telecommunication giant Comcast. (In addition to owning Fusion, Comcast-Spectacor also owns the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers and its indoor sports arena, the Wells Fargo Center Complex.) ARRIS and Comcast have frequently worked together to provide internet connectivity. ARRIS also has an existing sports sponsorship with Daniel Suarez of Stewart-Haas Racing, but this deal with Fusion marks the company’s first entry into esports sponsorship.
“This is a new demographic for us to go and talk to” said Duncan Potter, SVP of Global Marketing at ARRIS. “With esports and gamers in general, they tend to be very tech-savvy, they’re very sensitive to bandwidth and latency. They understand the basic concepts around the technology. Quite frankly, this is the language we love to speak.”
ARRIS also provides broadband technology and infrastructure to traditional sporting venues such as the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, Calif., Daytona International Speedway, and International Speedway’s ISM Raceway. Of the nine players currently listed on Fusion’s roster, all are from a different country around the world. ARRIS was not only attracted to the millennial, tech-savvy demographic of gamers in its sponsorship of Fusion, but also the diverse global outreach that the esports industry has achieved.
“Traditional sports audiences we’ve been involved with previously tend to be around specific geographies or specific countries,” Potter said. “There’s a tremendous following [of esports] across Asia, Europe, and obviously the U.S. This is an opportunity for us to reach a whole new audience geographically, and demographically as well by reaching the millennial, tech-savvy people that understand concepts like bandwidth, latency, manageability, flexibility—all things that the gaming audience prides themselves in understanding.”
SportTechie Takeaway
This season, Overwatch franchises in Dallas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles will play select matches in home venues. Though all Fusion home games in 2019 will be played at Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles, should the team look to create its own esports stadium in the future, ARRIS could be part of that effort. In a blog post announcing ARRIS’s partnership with Fusion, the company indicated an interest in supplying the internet connectivity for future esports venues.
“New gaming arenas are state-of-the-art entertainment venues,” the post reads. “Looking ahead, they won’t just rely on cutting-edge technology to power live, eSports competitions; they’ll need a futureproof network to enable their thousands of spectators to interact with the experience over Wi-Fi, VR, AR, and more. And our work in redefining connectivity through developments like 10G broadband is setting the stage for the next era of eSports.”