Popeyes is now sponsoring an eSports team out of Chicago

Bob
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Posted on: May 13, 2020 5:45 pm EDT

The popular fried chicken chain is getting fired up about eSports

As the eSports industry gets more attention from mainstream media and increases its popularity among more groups of people, more companies are turning to eSports for sponsorship deals. One of the most popular fried chicken quick-service chains (QSC) has signed a new deal with the eSports organization Chicago Huntsmen. Popeyes will now be a sponsor of the organization’s team competing in the Call of Duty League, as first reported by The Esports Observer.

The exact terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed yet, but what it is known is that Popeyes will be getting some assets like a chest jersey patch to be used during competitions. In addition, this QSC restaurant will be following up with a digital and social media integrations on Huntsmen channels. The deal will begin with the fried-chicken chain sponsoring the Huntsmen’s six-team Call of Duty: Warzone during its exhibition tournaments scheduled for this weekend. But this new sponsorship deal plans to go further. A possibility has been discussed of getting special Huntsmen items and some other team-related features to the Popeyes’ app, including some chicken sandwich trials.

“They’re trying to target different fans at a time when they didn’t have media running with other sports, so they understood that esports and gaming is a massive growing space and they needed to be in it somehow,” said Nico Amantia, senior account executive at Scout Sports & Entertainment – the company brokering the deal, “They have a lot of investment in basketball and college football, so they wanted to bridge that gap (until live sports returns) and dive into esports fans, which they hadn’t been hitting at all. This is a new audience and very intriguing for them.”