ESL has announced that German brewery Warsteiner will be an official partner of this month’s online ESL One Cologne event, and will host a contest for musicians and bands.
The Warsteiner Music Contest, also held in collaboration with Enter Records, will see a panel of judges choose from submitted songs and play them during the competition.
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Stephan Schroeder, SVP Global Brand Partnerships EMEA for ESL, commented in a release: “We are excited to once again be partnering with Warsteiner. Continuing our long-standing, successful partnership, we now introduce a new and exciting segment with the Warsteiner Music Contest, adding on to an already thrilling competition for the audience with ESL One Cologne and enriching the fan-experience and creating a wholly new point of attraction.”
Panelists from the three companies will pick five songs to play during the ESL One Cologne broadcasts, with one song ultimately chosen as the winner. That song will be included on the ESL One Cologne soundtrack by Enter Records.
ESL One Cologne 2020 has 12 top Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams vying for a $500,000 (£383,000) prize pool. ESL expects to net 70 million total viewers over the course of the competition, which runs from August 18-30th.
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Warsteiner and ESL first partnered for the German ESL Meisterschaft in 2017 and have remained aligned since, signing a three-year national agreement for German events in 2018. The beer brand sponsored a music show at the live ESL One Cologne 2019 event, and sees this contest as an evolution of that approach for this year’s online-only competition.
Nadja Gaertner, Head of Music and Lifestyle Sponsoring at Warsteiner, added: “We are happy that our successful cooperation with ESL is developing even further. The Music Contest is combining two extremely emotionalising topics: gaming and music.”
Esports Insider says: This is an interesting branded element of a major streaming event, and has the potential to introduce an up-and-coming artist to a large, engaged audience.