VCT 2023 International Leagues — Teams Sponsorship Breakdown

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It is impossible to imagine the esports industry without sponsors. Every team and organization has several partner companies, ranging from small startups to world-famous corporations. In this article, Esports Charts analyzes the VCT: International Leagues in Valorant and finds out which sponsors are the most popular among its participants.

There are 30 teams in the VCT: International Leagues, divided into three regions: Americas, EMEA, and the Pacific. Each region has its own popular categories of sponsors. In some regions, computer hardware and hardware manufacturers enjoy great popularity, and in other regions, food and beverage vendors are more common sponsors. As the example of Valorant shows, the variety of sponsors in esports is very large, ranging from companies specializing in children's toys to luxury car brands.

At the time of writing, we counted 167 unique sponsors in 20 different categories for the VCT league and its members. In total, they have 214 partnerships with teams. Pacific has the highest number of partnerships among league members — 98. We found 64 sponsors in EMEA and 52 in the Americas. You shouldn't be surprised that the number of partnerships and brands varies: some companies work with several teams in different leagues.

We analyzed the leagues' official websites and social networks for mentions of sponsors or advertising integrations during the preparation of this article. We also analyzed footage from live league broadcasts, where players showed their sponsors on club jerseys.

We should note that the article doesn't include such popular categories of esports sponsors as betting agents and cryptocurrency exchanges. Riot Games does not allow members of its Valorant leagues to cooperate with such companies. In March 2023, the Turkish news outlet Esporkolik reported that Riot Games had loosened this restriction, but the information was later denied.

Ranking of Teams by Number of Sponsors

DetonatioN FocusMe, competing in the Pacific region, became the most popular team based on the number of sponsors. The Japanese organization has up to 25 sponsors, which is nearly twice as many as the following team. There are a lot of regional brands on this list, but there are also businesses with well-known global brands. Examples include the well-known sportswear company Shampion, Intel, and the Japanese electronics giant Sharp. DetonatioN FocusMe has a lot of technical sponsors overall. The company collaborates with three electronics manufacturers and five businesses in the computer peripherals sector. DetonatioN FocusMe is also the leader in the variety of sponsorship categories — 12 out of 19.

Team Liquid, which ranks third overall, is the club with the most sponsors in the EMEA region. There are 12 sponsors in 9 categories for its Valorous team. Company partners of Team Liquid include Alienware, Monster Energy, HyperX, and Honda.

NRG has the broadest range of sponsors in the Americas division; its Valorant team partners with seven businesses across seven industries, including the clothing company Levis and the electronics maker ASUS. It should be noted that teams from the Americas often have fewer sponsors than those from the Pacific and EMEA.

Most Common Sponsors

The two most common sponsors in the VCT regional leagues were Secretlab, a manufacturer of gamer chairs, and energy drink brand Red Bull. Each of these companies partners with seven different teams in all three leagues. Their partners include Cloud9, T1, and other teams.

Logitech is the most popular tech sponsor. It partners with five teams, including Karmine Copr and Team Heretics. The most popular sponsor in the clothing brand category is Puma, which has four partners among the VCT participants.

We should note that the most common sponsors try to cooperate with teams from different regional leagues in order to have at least one representative in each of them. An interesting exception is Chupa Chups, which sponsors three teams in the EMEA league.

Most Popular Sponsor Categories

The most well-known esports sponsors continue to be local companies with strong ties to the sector. First and foremost, these companies produce electronics, computer hardware, gaming accessories, and peripherals. A little more than 15.5% of all sponsorship agreements from VCT participants were in the category of  Computers and Peripherals. Alienware, AMD, Asus, HP OMEN, HyperX, LG, Lenovo, Razer, Logitec, SteelSeries, and more businesses are represented in it.

Most of the members of the regional leagues have partners in this category. Moreover, some clubs sign up several companies from this category at once (like DetonatioN FocusMe from Japan). Such popularity is not surprising, because it is one of the most endemic areas, which can only be found in the industry of esports.

Food + Food Supplements takes second place in the ranking — its share of the total number of sponsors is 10.1%. Interestingly, the sponsors in this category are almost never repeated. The only exception is Chupa Chups, which cooperates with three European teams at once. The Food + Food Supplements category is often found among EMEA and Pacific participants, but in the Americas division, teams almost never work with partners in this segment.

Third place in the ranking of popular sponsorship categories was shared by beverage manufacturers and clothing and accessory brands. Both categories accounted for 7.19% of the league's total sponsorship deals. Red Bull and Monster Energy are the leaders in the first category, while Puma and Nike are the leaders in the second.

Other popular categories of sponsors include clothing brands, streaming platforms, and manufacturers of electronics, hardware, and furniture for gamers. Slightly fewer teams boast collaborations with banks, educational institutions, marketplaces, and fast food chains/restaurants. 

The least popular sponsorship categories include Music — it is represented only by cooperation between Sony Music Entertainment and Giants Gaming. We should also mention the Energy category, which includes partnerships between esports organizations and energy companies. For example, the Evil Geniuses line-up is sponsored by Chevron, one of the largest energy corporations in the world. At the same time, Karmine Corp cooperates with Ekwateur, which specializes in so-called "green energy".

Conclusion:

1. The most popular sponsors for VCT teams were endemic brands that are closely connected with the digital entertainment industries — esports, gaming, and streaming. These are manufacturers of computers, gaming devices and components, software, and so on.

2. Among the non-endemic sponsors is the jewelry company Tiffany (working with 100 Thieves), as well as several luxury car brands. For example, the same 100 Thieves cooperates with Lexus, DRX has a partnership agreement with Porsche, and we already mentioned Team Liquid and Honda above.

3. Secretlab, Red Bull, Logitech, Puma, Monster Energy, and ASUS have partners in every VCT league. About 13.5% of brands partner with two or more teams represented in regional leagues by Valorant.

4. In some categories, the Pacific league has more sponsors than EMEA and the Americas combined. These are Computers and Peripheral, Electronics, Finance and Software/Hardware.

5. In the Pacific, teams place more emphasis on technical and digital sponsors. Local clubs are actively partnering with electronics, device, app, etc. In EMEA, organizations are more active with food and snack companies, and in the Americas, with energy drink brands.

6. Teams in the Americas region prefer to sign only one sponsor from each area close to esports. They rarely see multiple sponsors from the same category.

7. Of all the VCT participants, only one team has no sponsors at all (they do not appear in the public space). We are talking about the Global Esports team, owned by the Indian esports organization of the same name.