Snacking While Streaming

Food and beverage-related brands have represented one of the key sectors involved in e-sports promotions over the past year and a half, partnering with e-sports teams and organizations for live events, streamed content, and sometimes merchandise sales or giveaways. Some examples:

• E-sports organization FaZe Clan paired with General Mills’ Totino’s brand to create special flavors of pizza rolls, billed as “the perfect gaming snack.” This month Totino’s introduced Faze Clan Buffalo Chicken Pizza Rolls, which it said was one of its most requested flavors, as the multi-year agreement between FaZe Clan and the brand enters its second year. Promotional components of the partnership have included a pop-up gaming lounge in Los Angeles, in partnership with video shopping app NTWRK and e-commerce service Shopify, where fans can acquire the new FaZe Clan flavor, and a content series, FaZe Boat, starring rapper Lil Yachty, with guest appearances from FaZe Clan personalities.

• The Team Liquid League of Legends club partnered with Anheuser Busch’s Bud Light, which became the organization’s first official beer. Activations as part of the promotional relationship include appearances by Team Liquid pros on Bud Light League Lounge, a weekly recap show on Twitch, virtual tailgates before championship competitions, live games and merchandise giveaways on the team’s channel on Discord, and several new streamed shows and podcasts.

• Riot Games collaborated with food delivery service Grubhub in a three-year agreement revolving around the League of Legends Championship Series, the North American pro league managed by Riot. Elements of the partnership included in-game branding and broadcast content, social content (including with champion Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng), limited-edition merchandise, delivery discount codes and restaurant perks, and occasional surprise virtual goodies for the League of Legends Hextech chest, a treasure chest full of loot that can be won through play or purchased from the League store.

• RSG, an e-sports organization based in Singapore, worked with Pizza Hut Singapore in a year-long partnership that included original, jointly created streamed content and live events for fans, as well as branding for Pizza Hut at the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang M2 World Championships.

• 100 Thieves, which has teams competing in League of Legends, Call of Duty, and Valorant as well as offering lifestyle content, teamed with Blue Diamond Almonds for a seven-episode, co-branded, YouTube reality series XTREMES Creator Camp, sponsored by Blue Diamond in support of its new product, spicy XTREMES almonds. In the show, 16 notable FaZe Clan esports streamers, influencers, and content creators competed in camp activities like archery and water relay races. A special #28XTREMESChallenge featured 100 Thieves creators eating 28 of the spicy XTREMES almonds on TikTok.

For the e-sports marketers, partnerships like these generate revenue and raise awareness in an organic and authentic fashion, since snacking—on pizza, pizza rolls, snacks like nuts, or takeout—and beer drinking are common activities while gaming or watching e-sports competitions or related content. For the corporate partners, the deals get their brands in front of a fast-growing and coveted audience of young consumers in a way that is generally not off-putting to the fans.