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League/Tournament Brands:
- Chinese esports organization LGD Gaming partners with livestreaming agency BGoose to build a joint Honor of Kings team.
- In order to legally acquire the franchise slot in the King Pro League (KPL), LGD Gaming and BGoose acquired KPL team Hope.
- LGD Gaming disclosed to The Esports Observer that the two companies will invest ¥80M RMB ($11.6M USD) to build the team, named LGDAE.
Esports organization LGD Gaming signed a partnership deal with Chinese livestreaming agency BGoose, and jointly established an Honor of Kings team in Tencent’s KPL competition. The team will now play under the name LGDAE, with a logo featuring a goose.
The KPL features a similar franchise tournament system as the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) in China. LGD Gaming told The Esports Observer that the two companies had acquired the KPL team Hope, in order to secure the KPL franchise slot.
Jie “Ruru” Pan, the founder and CEO of LGD Gaming, told The Esports Observer that the company and BGoose will invest ¥80M ($11.6M) in building the LGDAE Honor of Kings division. Further details on the investment were not disclosed by Jie.
BGoose is considered one of the most influential livestreaming agencies in China. The company also owns esports teams in PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG) and Peacekeeper Elite. In November of 2019, BGoose raised a series A+ funding round led by Tencent (according to a listing on Chinese credit and rating tool Tianyancha). Although the amount of this round was not disclosed, the valuation of this company had reached ¥1B ($144M), according to 36Kr.
Yuyang Wang, the CEO of BGoose, told The Esports Observer that BGoose will mainly focus on content creation and brand marketing, while LGD Gaming will work on improving team performance and training in this partnership.
“We [LGD Gaming] have strong esports knowledge and commercial capability, and BGoose has excellent capability of marketing players to become stars,” said Jie. “We believe this partnership can achieve a diversified esports business model.”
This is the third time that LGD Gaming has co-branded an esports team with another company. For Dota 2, LGD Gaming partnered with French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain to co-brand the team PSG.LGD. For CrossFire, LGD Gaming partnered with North American esports organization Reciprocity Corp. to establish LGD.REC to compete in China’s top CrossFire franchise leagues: CrossFire Pro League (CFPL) on PC, and CrossFire Mobile League (CFML) on mobile.
