Effect of eSport sponsorship on brands: an empirical study applied to youth

Abstract

This paper contributes to the understanding of sponsorship in eSports, shedding light on an enormously important topic that has been little explored in academia. ESport is growing internationally, mainly due to the easy access to technology, but also as a response to access to different competitions on the part of the general public, and especially youth. The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect that eSport sponsorship has on the health of a brand sponsoring a competition. The field work was carried out by means of a questionnaire distributed among the Internet population, differentiating between children in the age bracket 8 and 14 years and youth between 15 and 25 years, with a total of 1,619 responses. The questionnaire measured the health of the brand through analysing the variables related to the purchase funnel and the brand's advertising campaigns. The results suggest that sponsoring an eSports league has positive effects on the brand. The study also contributes some findings that are applicable to managers in the area of marketing, suggesting some future related lines of research.