Sponsor integration
Creator events and modern live-streaming platforms enable brands and sponsors to be at the forefront of the show and have their products or logos broadcast on stream far more clearly than they would be on the side of a football pitch. In a creator event, brands can have their products placed in a non-distracting manner alongside the main content, or have their logo plastered in every transition between scenes. Unlike institutionalised and regulated sports advertising, creator events leave control in the brand’s hands to decide how they want their image conveyed to an audience predominantly made up of 16-34-year-olds.It’s also worth noting that interactive features and extensions on certain streaming platforms enable users to engage with the event, predict a winner, enter competitions and fill out surveys. This level of interactivity far exceeds the possibilities of traditional sports on linear television. Furthermore, it’s possible to have promotional material surrounding an event and its partners featured in-game.Back in April 2020, a gaming influencer marketing agency hosted a Teamfight Tactics tournament to raise money for a charitable cause. When Riot Games, the developer of Teamfight Tactics, caught wind of the creator event, they featured its promotional material in the Teamfight Tactics client and included the logos of the creators and the event’s partners. Unsurprisingly, the event went on to reach hundreds of thousands of unique viewers across Twitch, YouTube and Facebook, and social media outreach achieved more than 465,000 impressions on Twitter and Instagram.When talking about the effectiveness of creator events, Frazer MacDonnell, COO of AFK Creators, explained: “The newfound popularity of creator events provide brands with a unique opportunity to market their products to an otherwise hard-to-reach audience. There is often a positive vibe at these online events and fans are engaged in watching their favourite creators compete in a way they’re not typically used to. I’m confident that brands can achieve substantially higher ROI when marketing through creator events than more traditional forms of digital marketing and sports sponsorship.”