Vodafone has become ESL’s Premium Partner, the world’s largest esports company in the world and will sponsor ESL’s flagship event series, Intel® Extreme Masters, ESL One and ESL Pro League. Esports is one of the fastest-growing international sports, with ESL tournaments taking place in arenas around the globe as the world’s best players and teams battle it out in front of a live audience and millions of fans watching online.
The collaboration with ESL highlights how Vodafone’s international network brings together gamers and fans from 25 countries where Vodafone has more than 500 million mobile connections, including 104 million on high speed 4G, and 19 million fixed broadband connections. It will also provide a showcase for the development of new 5G technologies set to transform gaming.
Vodafone will also work with ESL to support a series of initiatives that promote diversity and female participation in historically male-dominated esports activities. Vodafone will become a Premium Partner of the female esports challenge held during the IEM Sydney event in May 2018, and will collaborate with the world’s top female esports personalities to highlight the opportunities for women to participate professionally in esports or pursue a career in the esports industry.
Vodafone will be Premium Partner for the live global events in Australia (IEM Sydney in May 2018), UK (ESL One Birmingham in May 2018) and in Germany (ESL One Cologne in July 2018), with further dates to be announced in due course.
Vodafone’s sponsorship agreement with ESL includes a new live broadcast segment titled “The Vodafone View”, content and advertising distribution, as well as branding and activation at the events. More information can be found on the dedicated global content hub about esports and the partnership between Vodafone and ESL at playfaster.vodafone.com.
In Romania, according to the “LivePanel” global survey done by GroupM in 2017, 21% people are playing online video games daily. During weekdays, 24% of the respondents spend between 30 and 60 minutes playing video games and during weekends 28% spend between 60-120 minutes for this activity. 40% of the respondents play video games for relaxation, 33% for entertainment and 21% for passion. Also, 20% of the Romanians buy at least one video game every year. The survey collected responses from 3,000 internet Romanian users.
One of the latest initiatives developed by Vodafone Romania in the gaming field is the launch, in October 2017, of the “RaceReady Vodafone” mobile game which provides defensive driving lessons on Transfagarasan for all users and features rally champion Titi Aur. Vodafone held a spectacular live race between the rally champion Titi Aur, driving his rally car on the most spectacular road in the country and Romanian gamers who were competing on the mobile game replica of Transfagarasan in real time, with the help of the connectivity provided by Supernet™ 4.5G. In the first two weeks after the launch, “RaceReady Vodafone” was downloaded by more than 150,000 users that played, to date, 298,376 races summing a total time of 978 days. The mobile game is available for Apple and Android smartphones and tablets and is free of charge.
