eSports Tournaments: How Can Affiliates Benefit?
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What once was a narrow niche for geeks has evolved into a worldwide phenomenon in the past decade thanks to technological advances, global internet expansion, and worldwide passion for competitive gaming. And, of course, there was the Covid-19 pandemic, which boomed the gaming niche.
With an audience of 234 million enthusiasts and 240 million occasional viewers in 2021 (probably surpassing 500 million today), eSports tournaments have become the most viewed events in the USA, surpassing the NBA and NHL finals. 🙀
The global popularity of eSports offers plenty of opportunities to affiliate marketers. A vast choice of sports, huge budgets, and lots of tournaments – a chance no igaming affiliate marketer should miss.
Read on to find out how to take advantage of eSports tournaments to boost offers’ visibility and maximize your profit.
Why Promote Your Offers Around eSports Tournaments?
There’s no better time to promote your gaming offers to your target audience than around eSports tournaments. Why does this work? 🤔
Because of the huge audience reach and their emotional tie to their favourite teams.
Here’s why you should focus on marketing your offers online during tournament seasons:
- Euphoria – eSports fans consume online content related to eSports matches, which creates many opportunities to offer advertising – you get your ads right in front of the warmed-up, interested, and engaged audience.
- Spending more time online – eSports tournaments increase website traffic as fans are constantly looking for the latest news and updates on matches.
- Greater reach – With fans spending lots of time online, advertisers have a chance to get impressions, clicks and conversions around all of their marketing channels.
Another important reason that makes eSports competitions the best time to promote your iGaming offers is that they are going on all year round! This means that your offers can run throughout the year, making you money.
How to Craft Eye-Catchy eSports Creatives That Drive Conversions?
When preparing your eSports campaigns, you want them to be attention-grabbing and drive conversions. Of course, you do! But how?
Here are 3 golden rules on how to craft eSports creatives that convert:
#1. Design Compelling Visuals. The more relevant and compelling the ad is, the higher the chance of clicking on it! Make sure your creatives and website media contain colours and imagery corresponding to the relevant eSports game.
#2. Create Valuable Content. Since game fans are usually into their hobby, you need to create high-quality content that resonates with them and offers value to make them want to read, and even share online.
You don’t have to be an eSports fan to know the games. Do some research, read about a particular game you want to promote, and you can even spend an hour playing it. Then you will understand what is so cool about it, so you will easily form values that will get right into the hearts of your users.
#3. Keep Up with the Latest eSports Games and Trends. The eSports industry is ever-evolving and dynamic, with new game releases and events almost every week. Keeping up with the latest news in the industry will allow you to create valuable content and offers. An easy way to do this is by following the upcoming eSports tournaments.
7 Tips to Boost Your Offers’ Visibility and Maximize Conversions
Whether you’re a rookie or a vetted affiliate marketer, here are X tips on how to maximize your advertising efforts and boost your offers’ ROI.
- Run most ads before, during, and after the tournament to maintain audience engagement. But, make sure you align the launch time with the peak activity hours per each region.
- Personalise ads’ content based on your audience’s actions. Encourage consecutive deposits or making higher bets.
- Place ads across various channels, including social media platforms, Google Ads, and broadcasting channels to reach more people.
- Track and analyse audience behaviour to adjust your creatives as needed.
- Do research before launching your campaigns to identify the best GEOs, demographics, and audience online behaviours to ensure your ads match their search habits and needs.
- Consider your budget. If you have a limited budget, focus on local events. If your budget is bigger, you can go over the borders and include international events.
- Use some of the top ad formats for eSports:
- Popunder – Launch them on the event’s opening day and run them until the end. CTAs, deposit bonuses, or welcome bonuses are the key elements of this type of creatives.
- Push notifications – Use Push for scaling, include match results, schedules, or game-changing news for maximum effect.
Top 5 Biggest eSports Tournaments
As we already mentioned earlier in this post, you need to keep up with the latest game releases, trends, and tournaments so that you can launch relevant campaigns and drive traffic to your website. So, you need to know the biggest eSports events worldwide.
Here are the 5 biggest eSports events in the world!
I. IEM Cologne for CS:GO 2
Organised by ESL (Electronic Sports League), this event is one of the largest eSports tournaments in the world. It brings together thousands of viewers and CS:GO teams all over the world in one place – the Lanxess Arena, Cologne.
This year, the competition will be on Counter-Strike 2 for the first time ever. 16 teams will muster their forces chasing the first prize of $1,000,000.
II. ESL ONE for DOTA 2
ESL ONE is the second-largest gaming event in the world where DOTA 2 gamers compete against each other. This year, it took place in Birmingham, UK in Resorts World Arena. 12 teams competed and the main prize was $1,000,000. Full of thrilling and dramatic actions, it was one of the most viewed events worldwide.
III. League of Legends World Championship (LoL Worlds)
The LOL World Championship stands shoulder to shoulder with the global attraction, the World Cup. Hosted by Riot Games, this event focuses on one game: League of Legends and it’s held twice a year, in spring and Summer. The winner gets a 20-kilogram Summoner’s Cup and a multi-million-dollar prize.
Each year, the tournament changes its location. This year, it travels to London, in The O2 arena.
IV. The International for Dota 2
The International is the biggest endowed eSports tournament in the world. Organized by Valve, this event gathers DOTA 2 gamers from all over the world for a chance to win a multimillion dollars worth prize.
This year, the event will take place in Royal Arena, Copenhagen. 16 teams will compete for the grand prize of $1,600,00.
V. IEM Katowice
IEM Katowice is the first Counter Strike tournament of the year. It’s a Polish CS:GO event organized by ESL. This year, it took place at the International Congress Center with a $500,000 prize pool. 24 teams competed for the chance to win the Intel Extreme Masters trophy and a cash prize.
Upcoming Events
There are LOTS of eSports events this year. Here are some of the best eSports tournaments to keep an eye on the following period.
| Name | Game | Date | Location |
| VALORANT Champions 2024 | VALORANT | August 1st – August 25th | South Korea |
| IEM Cologne 2024 | Counter-Strike 2 | August 7th – August 18th | Germany |
| The International 2024 | Dota 2 | September 4th – September 15th | Denmark |
| PUBG Nations Cup 2024 | PUBG | September 6th – September 8th | South Korea |
| League of Legends World Championship 2024 | League of Legends | September 25th – November 2nd | Germany, France, UK |
| Call of Duty Mobile World Championship 2024 | Call of Duty: Mobile | October 4th – October 6th | US |
| Intel Extreme Masters Rio 2024 | Counter-Strike 2 | October 7th – October 13th | Brazil |
| Brawl Stars World Finals | Brawl Stars | November 2024 | N/A |
| Clash of Clans World Championship 2024 | Clash of Clans | November 2024 | N/A |
| IESF World Esports Championship 2024 | Multi-title | November 11th – November 19th | Saudi Arabia |
| Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 | Counter-Strike 2 | November 30th – December 15th | China |
| PUBG Global Championship 2024 | PUBG | December 12th – December 22nd | Malaysia |
Summing Up
The best time to launch your offers is around eSports tournaments. With an estimated 500 million fans across the globe, you have millions of chances to drive a good percentage of them to your website and make some money.
To ensure your campaigns’ success, make sure you follow the best practices mentioned in this article. From compelling visuals to choosing the right ad format, there’s a lot to take care of before launching your offer.
Compelling offers and relevant, valuable, and time-sensitive information are the perfect combo that will attract visitors and keep them coming back for more!
Want to know what results you can get with Leadgen offers? Join our Telegram chat and ask experienced affiliates!
