Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch League has sold its first two league-wide sponsorships, securing HP and Intel as endemic hardware suppliers. HP’s Omen by HP brand will be the official PC and monitor of all league competitions, and Intel Core i7 will be the official CPU of the league. Terms of the multiyear deals were not disclosed. The deals include broadcast integration (though no media deals have been announced by Overwatch League), traditional advertising assets, co-promotion on social media and co-marketing rights, said Major League Gaming President & CEO Pete Vlastileca. MLG is the Activision subsidiary that operates Overwatch League. HP Senior Manager of Global Marketing Josh Kocurek acknowledged the startup risk of Overwatch League, which faces industry skepticism due to the game’s low viewership numbers. However, he said his brand was drawn to an uncluttered landscape. “Overwatch League was super-attractive to us, because it gave us tons of opportunity in the global space, as well as being able to come in and be a brand new fresh league that hasn’t already been super-commoditized by our competitors,” Kocurek said. HP has been a sponsor of the Overwatch World Cup, an international competition that is culminating this weekend. Intel will also sponsor future competitive Overwatch events as part of the deal.
