Fnatic’s League of Legends, CS:GO, Dota 2 teams to benefit from partnership with soccer club
Following the announcement of Fnatic’s partnership with football club AS Roma to reveal its FIFA roster, the details of how the partnership will benefit its other esports teams have been revealed.
Speaking to Yahoo Esports in an interview, Fnatic founder Sam Mathews discussed what the new relationship will bring to its League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Dota 2 teams in particular.
“We already tapped AS Roma up, it’s been a long discussion with them,” Mathews said. “We’ve already been talking with [AS Roma] about their sports psychologist, about the nutritionists, legality in different parts. It’s a constant dialogue, even potentially from a sponsorship and sales [perspective] they can open doors up.”
“We can help cross-promote and do some stuff with their partners. This is early days, and I think we would be stupid as an industry to ignore the huge industry that traditional sports is, and everything that has to offer. We can learn from that, and vice-versa, we can also create new paths and new grounds within esports which they might be able to learn from.”
Promotion between esports and traditional sports audiences is not new. A similar cross-promotion was also mentioned by esports team Misfits following the announcement of their partnership with NBA team Miami Heat in January this year.
“[AS Roma] is a very old team. They have have a lot of new facilities with that though, with a lot of investment into training facilities, sports facilities, research around sports psychology. And also from a content perspective, they have very large social reach, basically a studio.
“It’s a number of things really,” Mathews said. “From talking about how do they structure contracts to how do they manage their social and how do they manage making sure their talent, the primadonnas, can sometimes be kept in check and made to perform at their best.
“And vice-versa for us, it’s a matter of [us] helping them find the FIFA players.We help them basically understand what a normal relationship with an esports star is. And we’ll be monitoring, maintaining, and working with that team going forward.”
Mathews also confirmed in the interview that Fnatic is starting up a new gaming house in Los Angeles. Its Overwatch team will be based in the house.
