Comcast's Xfinity brand will announce Thursday that it is making a major investment in esports.
The company will not only partner with ESL and have immediate presence in Thursday's Halo Championship Series Pro League, but it will also be connected to this weekend's Heroes of the Storm tournament and future North American Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) competitions.
In addition, the company has signed on to be the official entertainment and Internet provider of Evil Geniuses, who took home more than $6 million last summer after winning the The International 5 Dota 2 Championship.
The deal includes outfitting both Evil Geniuses' training facilities -- one in Alameda, California, and the other in Urbana, Illinois -- with the company's Gigabit Pro internet service and its Xfinity X1 video product. Xfinity will also receive plenty of exposure through branding in the practice houses, as well as having its logo on the players' jerseys when they play at big events.
"We have a lot of deals in sports, but frankly no deal is like this where our product is so core to the actual participation of the competition," said Matthew Lederer, the company's director of sports brand strategy.
"We see this as akin to our entrance in NASCAR," Lederer said. "People love the brands that are supporting the sport. But in order to make a connection, you have to understand how to talk to that new market appropriately and to be relevant to them in an authentic way."
Lederer said that as the company started to evaluate the marketplace, esports emerged as the leading candidate for new sponsorship opportunities.
"We keep track of what the 18- to 24-year-old demographic is doing and we were seeing a lot of the same things that other brands have seen with esports. It has a tremendous growth curve and it's clearly spreading quickly into the U.S."
Lederer said that the goal would be to eventually roll out proprietary esports content on its own video channel.