International beer brand Heineken has been announced by Riot Games as the new sponsor of the Brazilian League of Legends Championship (CBLOL).
Heineken will promote its non-alcoholic beer brand, ‘Heineken 0.0’, in CBLOL broadcasts for the next two years.
The choice of Heineken 0.0 as the featured brand fits into the message that Heineken is looking to promote to the CBLOL audience: that Heineken is ‘for players who appreciate quality beer but do not want to give up on high competitive performance’, according to Riot’s announcement.
The beer brand has also acquired naming rights for the trophy given to the best player chosen by the audience (Craque da Galera, in Portuguese), featured in a ceremony at the end of the year.
The second split of CBLOL in 2022 starts on June 11th. It already features the beer brand in its broadcast and in its live event, which takes place in Riot Games’ ‘CBLOL Arena’ studio in São Paulo before a live audience.
Before closing with Heineken, Riot Games recently brought in another new sponsor for the Brazilian League of Legends circuit. In April, the bank Santander inked a five-year deal with the publisher to be featured in CBLOL and in its Academy division.
This is Heineken’s first activation in League of Legends, and also the first beer brand to be featured in a Riot Games product in Brazil.
In the North American market, Riot also closed a deal with Bud Light for the LCS in 2020, while in the Latin American market the brewing conglomerate Ab InBev inked a deal with Riot’s Liga Latinoamerica (LLA).
These are signs that beer brands — once taboo in esports due to the industry’s perceivedly younger audience — are gaining traction.
