Why ESL is undergoing a 25th anniversary brand refresh
By Alexander Lee • August 16, 2024 •
ESL
Because it celebrates its twenty fifth year — and a marquee take care of the Esports World Cup — ESL has announced a impress refresh intended to ship the esports company closer to its roots.
Previously identified as Electronic Sports League, ESL was once primarily based in Germany in 2000. Since merging with the esports platform FACEIT after both companies were bought in 2022 by Savvy Video games Community, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the company has signed presents to flee competitive gaming leagues for considerable publishers equivalent to Activision Blizzard and Rebel Video games. It is a number one resolve in the transformation of the esports commerce from its previous publisher-flee model to a scheme of leagues operated by third-bag together distributors.
ESL’s impress refresh, announced the day previous to this at Intel Coarse Masters Cologne 2024 (an ESL-flee “Counter-Strike” tournament), is the company’s first rebrand since 2019, when it adopted a inexperienced and yellow color palette. This most recent impress refresh, which uses the tagline “Are living Legendary,” maintains these colors but entails a brand new font inspired by worn stone carvings, apart from classical marble statue imagery in accordance with three-d scans of steady viewers participants taken at ESL occasions over the previous six months.
“The muse of ‘Are living Legendary’ is to raise the followers to the identical level as the players, because there’s no players without followers, and there’s no followers without players — that’s what makes the neighborhood so particular and outlandish,” mentioned ESL/FACEIT Community head of marketing Fabio Tambosi. “So, one other frigid part we’re doing is we are going to have the choice to launch this fan gallery; followers are going so that you might possibly head to our web house and get hold of themselves in the crowd and get photos.”
Even supposing the mentioned procedure of ESL’s rebrand is to kick off a year-lengthy party of the company’s twenty fifth anniversary, it happens to have near alongside one among ESL’s supreme commerce presents in years — its multi-year settlement to characteristic the Esports World Cup, announced final week.
“The stars aligned, and it was once the most practical time,” mentioned Tambosi, who suggested Digiday that the parallel timing of the announcements was once a fortuitous coincidence. “We’ve been working the Esports World Cup from the inception piece.”
By sustaining the colors from its most recent rebrand and adopting a more historic, classical gaze, ESL’s new branding is intended to reference the company’s a protracted time-lengthy tenure as a number one company inside the esports commerce, apart from the consistency of ESL’s administration and message since 2019.
“What we wished to enact was once reinvigorate the emblem, but ship alongside one of the crucial equity in the gentle impress — the identification work that we had done that’s been spherical there for a in truth lengthy time,” mentioned Marta Swannie, a ingenious partner on the company Originate Bridge and Partners, which created ESL’s new impress identities in both 2019 and 2024. “We had this defective color palette previous to that was once known as ‘poisonous inexperienced,’ and we factual wished to defend some of that going forward.”
Even supposing publishers and advertisers have embraced Saudi Arabia’s funding in esports, the country’s rising connections to the commerce have moreover resulted in pushback from some esports followers who’ve protested that nation’s human rights story. As ESL/FACEIT Community continues to prolong all the design in which by the esports commerce, it is understandable that the company’s management is taking a gaze to stress its deep and longstanding ties to the condo, which precede its acquisition by Savvy Video games Community in 2022.
“The ‘Are living Legendary’ impress campaign is a celebration of our heritage to continue to grow the esports commerce since its dawn,” Tambosi mentioned. “It’s an evolution of who we are and a reflection of our commitment to players and followers, and where we’re headed.”
Even supposing ESL/FACEIT Community is one among Saudi Arabia’s most viewed investments in esports, ESL executives have lengthy maintained that their operations are entirely just from the Public Investment Fund, and that the overwhelming majority of ESL’s higher administration has remained in space following the 2022 acquisition. The day previous’s impress refresh, which specializes in ESL’s lengthy history inside competitive gaming, presents ESL a probability to make stronger that message.
“Anniversaries reward a fairly rare replacement to remind your potentialities in the commerce and give a nod to who you are and where you’ve been, but moreover turn it facing forward and set it in a more thrilling in model gaze and enchantment,” mentioned Jim Heininger, the founder of company The Rebranding Experts. “So it seems admire a fairly clear plan to nod to the previous to remind of us of what they preferred and loved regarding the company, and now roll it forward into how they’re going to adapt in the kill.”
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