可口可乐、英特尔和日产等大品牌扎堆涌向电子竞技

    就连全美橄榄球联盟也开始关注电子竞技了。圣路易斯公羊队的进攻内锋罗杰•萨福德就是一名热心玩家，他还参加了2013年在阿纳海姆市举办的MLG电竞比赛。由于非常醉心于电子竞技，他甚至买下了《使命的召唤：幽灵》的Rise Nation Gaming战队。这支战队也正是几个月前刚刚参加了奥斯汀X-Games邀请赛的八支战队之一，此前该战队还参加了美国动视（Activision）和Xbox在洛杉矶举办的《使命的召唤》冠军赛，这场比赛的奖金为100万美元。

    萨福特最近与公羊队签订了一份五年3170万美元的续约合同。他表示：“直到去年，我还一点不了解电子竞技，我就是非常喜欢《使命的召唤》，而且总是在网上玩这个游戏。我喜欢耀武扬威的感觉，于是我买下了这支战队。终于我能以第一视角看所有东西，而不是通过一块电脑屏幕。电竞对这些孩子也是好事，它说明玩网游现在也能赚钱了，并非总是在浪费时间。”

    对于大赞助商们来说，电子竞技绝对不是浪费时间。英特尔公司（Intel）赞助电子竞技已经有十年的历史了。全球电竞赛事英特尔极限大师赛的负责人乔治•吴表示，英特尔之所以赞助电竞比赛，就是要建立一个营销平台，在线上和线下推广它的游戏处理器，使其成为游戏爱好者青睐和推荐的品牌，并且推动对旗下所有游戏产品的购买意图。

    乔治•吴表示：“到现场观看英特尔极限大师赛的观众已经增长了10倍，观众们为了买一张门票不得不排起长队。而在网络上，这项赛事的观众已经增长了100倍，现在观看一场比赛的视频直播观众，要比以往一个赛季的观众都多。”（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    Even the NFL has taken notice of eSports. St. Louis Rams offensive lineman Rodger Saffold is an avid gamer who attended his first MLG competition in Anaheim in 2013. He liked eSports so much he bought Call of Duty Ghosts team Rise Nation Gaming, which was one of the teams that competed at X-Games Austin a few months after the Activision and Xbox $1 Million Call of Duty Championship in Los Angeles.

    “I didn’t even know about eSports until last year, but I just enjoyed playing Call of Duty so much, and I was always online,” said Saffold, who recently signed a five-year, $31.7 million contract extension with the Rams. “I love the bragging rights. And now here I am. I finally see everything for the first time from a first-person view instead of on a computer screen. It’s all good for these kids. It shows that video games can bring you some money now. It’s not always a waste of time.”

    ESports is definitely not a waste of time for big sponsors. Intel has been sponsoring eSports for over 10 years now. George Woo, who heads up the Intel Extreme Masters global eSports tournament, said the company entered the space to establish a marketing platform to promote its gaming processor online and offline to make it the preferred and recommended processor brand by enthusiasts and to drive purchase intent for all of its gaming products.

    “Attendance to Intel Extreme Masters events has grown 10X with us filling up sport stadiums, where we have visitors lining up to get a seat to watch the competition,” said Woo. “Online it has grown 100X, where we now get more viewers watching livestreams for a single event than we’d have tune in for an entire season in the past.”