Friday , March 29 2024

Esports, Brands And Indian Gaming Ecosystem 

The Indian e-sports and online gaming industry has grown leaps and bounds over the last couple of years, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The accessibility to the internet and affordability of high-performance smartphones has played a crucial role. 

According to KPMG India and the Indian Federation of Sports Gaming (IFSG), at the end of the financial year 2023, there will be rapid growth in digital infrastructure, reaching a cumulative revenue of Rs 11,900 crore. 

Apart from that, the ongoing growth in the sector and the audience base has created a great opportunity for brands to communicate with their target customer. 

“For brands, it’s not only about putting their logo on the stream, but it is also about creating experiential branding, which is more critical from the brands perspective rather than just putting up a logo,” said Anurag Khurana, Newgen Gaming.  

Khurana added that if a brand needs to interact with the gaming community, they should enable more tournaments for the community to participate, which will increase viewership.  

According to the experts, in the present world brands are positioning themselves on a gaming spot to attract more viewership, as it is not about face marketing anymore, it has become more of experiential marketing.

“We have created a bunch of product from time to time right including a very specializes gaming chair that sort of helps to improve performance,” said Shreya Sachdev, Head, Marketing, PUMA 

Talking about the evolution of esports, Sachdev further said that the esports space is evolving, in the hierarchy of the way we look at the sports and performance sports. I think the definition itself has expanded over the past few years.  

“We do not want to be missed out as a brand. We need to be present where the customers are, so it’s more strategic, experienced and we go beyond advertising,” said Santosh Iyer, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Mercedes Benz. 

When we were thinking about entering into sports for us it was all about engagement not advertisement, according to Iyer.

“Technology plays an important role for brands as it can provide relevant statistical information which may help the brand to understand the right spot for their advertisement,” said Alakshit Tripathi, Industry Head- Consumer Packaged Goods, InMobi. 

Tripathi believes that the game break provides an opportunity where there is nothing on the screen beside the advertisement which is not overlaying on anything which removes the barrier of language or context, resulting in a pure advertising spot.   

The experts were speaking at an industry event on Indian gaming ecosystem.

About Deep Majumdar

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