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The Dallas Fuel has signed Frontier Communications to a multifaceted new deal that includes presenting rights to all five of the Overwatch League team’s homestands this season, starting with the league opener this weekend at Esports Stadium Arlington. Terms were not disclosed for the deal, but Frontier becomes the exclusive internet service provider of Envy Gaming, the parent company of the Fuel.
Assets include in-stadium signage, ads on video boards, activation space, branded content with the team, and naming rights to a studio that will be built at Envy’s new HQ. This is Frontier’s first deal in esports, and Envy Gaming CRO Mark Coughlin said that Frontier is getting into the space to market and in some cases prove the speed of its broadband technology. Dallas is a key market for Frontier, which helped the Fuel land the deal. Both companies will announce the deal later this morning.
While the amount of revenue coming into Envy from the deal is not yet known, landing a company to take presenting rights of all five homestands at once is a notable development for the esports organization, because it is one of the three that is hosting the maximum amount of OWL homestands this season.
“While we hung our neck out there a little bit doing five events, for us getting this (asset sold) across five vents has really helped and paid off,” said Coughlin. Coughlin also said that revenue-wise, “We had a really good offseason, we have more announcements coming later this week that are both team and event related to a degree, and we haven’t lost anybody while we picked a few up.”
Adam Stern is a staff writer for Sports Business Journal, where this article first appeared.