Interview by Jason "Anomoly" Bass, Scott "Sirscoots" Smith, Jason "Alchemist" Baker and Mark "Jesuit" Cheben

We often hear from players, managers, and talking heads about the buisness of eSports and how to go about managing a team. However, how often have you, the GotFrag audience, actually have heard these words of wisdom from the people who make or break a team's sponsorship dreams. Well we here at GotFrag have a treat for you, an interview with Sheryl Huang, a Senior Manager in Worldwide Marketing Communications for NVIDIA, and Jennifer Whelan, Worldwide Partnership Marketing Manager for Intel, to explain their side of the coin and how sponsorship works from the corporate angle.


How did the two of you get into the eSports scene originally?

Sheryl - I started at NVIDIA in 2001, coming from the movie business in Los Angeles. One of my first assignments was to figure out the best way to support NVIDIA’s best customers – the gaming community. We started out by supporting small community LAN parties on a weekly basis. I remember spending my Fridays digging through our storage closets grabbing whatever I can to put in a FedEx box to ship out to some guy in Missouri or Massachusetts. It just kind of grew from there.

Then one day, I got an email from Angel Munoz at the CPL to go check out the Winter CPL event. Quite frankly, I walked in with my Hollywood mentality expecting a geek fest with reclusive gamers in full swing. It was quite the opposite. It was like walking onto any regular college campus (except that there’s 1 girl for every 200 guys) where you had regular guys just hanging out, socializing, competing and generally having a good time. I was introduced to the concept of Counter-Strike and eSports. Right after that event, we started sponsoring the CPL, along with other large, regional LAN parties.

That year my head of marketing asked me, “what about sponsoring some teams?” I was really apprehensive about it because some of the teams I’ve read about up until that point seemed very unstable and unpredictable. “Nah…it’s a bit like betting on a race horse,” I said. Right after that I met Scott Valencia (now with CPL, formerly with CompUSA). Scott introduced me to Team 3D and Craig Levine. I guess you can say the rest was history…

Jennifer - Intel began sponsoring the CPL in 2000 and I have been the relationship manager since 2003.

In the North American community, at least, people often believe sponsorship is directly tied to a team’s performance. Teams like 3D and u5 are always under the charge that they do not deserve their sponsorships, and a team like complexity, who lacks a head sponsor, is more deserving of one. Is this how sponsorship works, and is tied to a teams performance?

Sheryl - I don’t think it’s just a North American mentality. There are a lot more teams than there are sponsorship dollars so naturally the questions always come up when a team isn’t winning all the time. I believe many of the top teams around the world face the same questions about their worth at one time or another.

In the world of sponsorships, when you sign up to support an entity, you’re in it for the long haul. When NVIDIA signs on, we do a lot more than just slap a logo on a jersey for a month or two. We get feedback from them on our products. We help develop players into good spokespeople for the team, our brand, and the community. Sometimes we even work with the players individually to see where they want to go in their career after they retire. It’s a bit like NFL or NBA players retiring and then going to work for the team’s back office doing marketing or PR, or maybe even going on to work as a broadcaster for a TV network to cover the sport.

Jennifer - Intel supports not only teams, but leagues, developers, industry initiatives and events in the gaming space. Sponsorship and investment are tied to Intel’s business objectives, not the performance of specific teams that are supported by Intel marketing dollars. Intel also looks at how long a team has been together and who has sponsored them in the past.