The way to my heart is definitely food. Make me chocolate chip cookies, and I’ll probably marry you. But esports seems like a good way to win the hearts of the wider gaming community.
Nvidia is teaming up with global esports organization ESL to provide GeForce GTX graphics processors for all of the PCs at the upcoming ESL One event in Cologne. This is the largest Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament in the world, and teams of players will fight over a $250,000 prize pool on rigs running Nvidia hardware. This is important because it signifies that the best players in the world use GeForce when competing even if they don’t use that at home. This could convince esports fans to invest in Nvidia products like GPUs or the G-sync monitors that reduce latency and screen tearing to play like the pros.
“GeForce GTX is our de facto standard for professional esports events,” ESL vice president of pro gaming Ulrich Schulze said in a canned statement. “CS:GO players require extremely high frame rates and as low latency as possible. Nvidia GeForce GTX and G-sync technologies deliver on all fronts.”
Of course, this isn’t an individual superstar endorsing a product. It is a league, and that’s a huge get for Nvidia. Competitive gaming events like these always come with standardized hardware so that each team is playing on even terms. And this isn’t like golf where the manufacturers cater to a set of guidelines and policies for the pros.
So this endorsement deal puts Nvidia’s logo adjacent to the top Counter-Strike players on planet Earth. And when the millions of people tune in to watch (more than 450,000 are viewing right now on Twitch alone), they’ll see that brand next to their favorite players.
With ESL One officially starting tomorrow and running through Sunday, Nvidia stands to get a ton of exposure for its products. The group stages are live right now and are already extremely popular, and you can join the massive audience watching it on Twitch.