Pictured: Romain Bigeard (left) Travis Gafford (right). Credit: Travis Gafford
Earlier this week, esports content creator Travis Gafford released an interview with Romain Bigeard, business development manager at Riot Games 
. In the interview, Bigeard discussed Riot’s new focus on developing sponsorships and partnerships for the rebranded League of Legends European Championship (LEC).
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For its inaugural season, the LEC has so far secured partnerships with a number of brands including DXRacer, Footlocker, Shell, Logitech, and Kia. To kick off its deal with Kia, Riot aired a commercial featuring the LEC broadcast talent team. Bigeard said that the video was largely produced in-house by Riot Games.
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“Ideally we maybe could use teams,” he said, “but not really because teams have their own ecosystem, and we are Riot – you’re signing the tournament itself. So, what we can offer you is actually our casters, our talent. And they’re really good. They’re used to talking in front of a camera, they’re funny…it’s going a bit over the top compared to what an agency could deliver, but because it’s done so beautifully…it’s good.”
Both the LEC and its North American counterpart, the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS), now have more brand partnerships in place than ever before. The 10 teams in each league have signed longterm partnership agreements with Riot Games which includes revenue sharing for all sponsorship deals. According to Bigeard, Riot conducted over 350 interviews with brands last year.
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“I hope most of the new sponsors we’re going to sign in the future, we’re going to have this specific moment to sit around the table and say ‘look, what’s the best way to activate your brand?’ So it’s not too cringe, it makes our community happy, and then we’re both happy at the end of the day.”
Bigeard also said that Riot is currently planning activations for the LEC’s brand partners for the upcoming Spring Finals in Rotterdam at the Ahoy Arena. The event will conclude the first half of the 2019 LEC season (known as the Spring Split).
