On March 29, 2021, “Herbalife X Nenking Esports Center” is officially unveiled. During the ceremony, Herbalife, chief sponsor of Nenking’s Guangzhou Charge, announces its title sponsorship for Nenking Esports Center. Moreover, Steven Zhong, CEO of Nenking Esports, reveals his future plans and expectations for Guangzhou Charge (OWL) and Ultra Prime (LPL), and envisions Nenking Esports’ development.
As a new force in this field, Nenking Esports has acquired two franchises from different leagues and won a summer-showdown champion. It’s known to all that Tianhe Sports Stadium, a venue operated by Nenking, has held many influential esports competitions. And the Foshan International Sports & Cultural Center, where Nenking Esports Center is located, even held the LPL Spring Finals back in 2019. In the future, Nenking Esports will extend its reach into more esports.
“Since we entered esports field, we’ve been looking for and trying to set up a sustainable business model.” Steven Zhong said when being asked about Nenking Esports’ future plans, “we’ll mainly focus on extensions on franchise, home venue, event brand and education.”
Currently, Nenking Esports owns two franchises: Guangzhou Charge and Ultra Prime. Speaking of extending franchise, Steven Zhong said “it’s believed that in the future, there’ll be more and more high-quality esports games around the globe. So, to draw more target audience, we’ll build more franchises and further expand our brand into a larger market”. Recently, there are lots of esports games like Valorant, LOL (mobile game) and COD (mobile game) emerging into the market. So we could probably look forward to Nenking Esports’ future moves in establishing new franchises among these new games.
Nenking Esports Center covers an area of 3,600 square meters. The place where it locates is the Foshan International Sports & Cultural Center built by Nenking Group with an overall floorage of 155,000 square meters at a cost of 2 billion in 2018. Meanwhile, Nenking also owns the operation right of Guangzhou Tianhe Sports Stadium. In the past two years, the above-mentioned venues have held many top esports events, such as the 2019 LPL Spring Finals, Identity V League, the QQ Speed Asian Cup Finals. For the time being, the offline events are affected due to the epidemic prevention and control, yet in the long run, it’s obviously that the home-and-away system will be likely prevailing across top-level leagues like LPL. That being said, Nenking Esports is born with unparalleled advantages as it values venue business as one of its important areas for business growth.
“We’re sparing no efforts to promote Nenking-branded games as we managed to hold the ‘UP OWL Invitational Tournament’ not long ago. This is an event for the secondary esports community, and a nice try for us to build our own brand with marketing differentiation strategy.” Steven Zhong said. The market demand for secondary esports event has been existing since birth of esports, but now it requests a more professional mode. Therefore, Nenking Esports will explore new patterns to meet the demands of these specific players and audiences.
Throughout these years, esports education industry has been growing enormously, leading to a strategic cooperation between Nenking and GDUFS. With the current management team and hardware resource of the multi-function esports center, Nenking plans to give a shot to brand-new esports education business, so as to attract more esports fans and provide live experience for those who aspire to engage in esports business.
As the event draws to an end, Nenking Esports announces a strategic collaboration with Weibo, the largest social media platform in China. From now on, Weibo will join hands with Nenking-branded franchises, including Ultra Prime and Guangzhou Charge. “It’s known to all that Weibo has built a profound esports community foundation for years, and it is a production platform for esports-related media content as well. So, we’ve got a common ground based on our mutual love and passion for esports. The partnership with Weibo will further expand our brand impact.” Said Steven Zhong during an interview.