Luxury automotive maker BMW has signed its first-ever esports team sponsorship by partnering with the esports organization Cloud9.
Cloud9 announced its newest partnership on the organization’s Twitter account, posting an image that showed six Cloud9 employees and players — including CEO Jack Etienne, as well as League of Legends (LoL) player and renown cosplayer Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi — posing in front of a BMW car along with the phrase, “It’s character that drives performance.”
We at Cloud9 are thrilled to announce that @BMWUSA has joined the #C9FAM!
Character drives our performance, ready to get behind the wheel? #socalbmw pic.twitter.com/fW8emURXIF
— Cloud9 (@Cloud9) March 9, 2019
In a subsequent tweet, Etienne said that his team had just shot a series of commercials for BMW as part of their partnership deal.
BMW previously only did a single-event sponsorship for the 2017 European LoL Championship Series (LCS) Summer Finals in Paris. The automaker produced a series of videos with then-LCS team Unicorns of Love for that event.
BMW’s commitment to a partnership with Cloud9 may very well signal a more concerted effort by the renown automaker to establish itself in the esports industry.
BMW is the second big sponsor that Cloud9 signed with this week, following the announcement of a partnership with AT&T— another first-time team sponsor.
As part of that partnership, AT&T will present a new Cloud9 digital video series called “The Nines,” which will spotlight the organization’s various teams competing in different esports titles.
AT&T will also sponsor Cloud9’s “communications hub” in its headquarters and have its logo on the back and sleeve of the team’s jerseys.
Cloud9 has not yet revealed the full extent of the BMW sponsorship, although the carmaker’s logo already appears on the team’s Twitter banner.
Cloud9 is one of the most popular esports organizations in the world, with 17.4 million followers across its various social media channels.
