- Team SoloMid has signed a 10-year naming rights agreement with FTX Trading Limited and West Realm Shires Services for $210 million
- The esports organization will be renamed TSM FTX and will use the sponsorship money to expand globally
- However, Riot’s rules won’t allow TSM to wear FTX’s logo during League of Legends and VALORANT games
Team SoloMid has made history by signing one of the most expensive sponsorships deals in esports. It will be accordingly renamed to TSM FTX.
TSM Signs a Remarkable Deal with FTX
According to a report by The New York Times, Team SoloMid, one of the most influential esports organizations in the world, has agreed to a 10-year, $210 million naming rights deal with FTX Trading Limited and West Realm Shires Services who own the cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX. This is one of the biggest sponsorship deals in esports ever.
TSM will be renamed to TSM FTX and will use the money as leverage to expand the organization’s operations across several regions. New offices are planned for Europe, South America, and Asia. TSM FTX will also buy $1 million worth of FTX Tokens to give to its members.
Last year Forbes estimated TSM’s value at $410 million, making it one of the most expensive esports organizations. The company not only fields male and female teams in many of the popular esports but also regularly runs ecosystem initiatives such as TSM University.
FTX deals with all kinds of currencies, including both pricey ones such as Bitcoin and some more accessible ones like Dogecoin. On FTX’s USA platform, $6 billion worth of crypto was exchanged for the past month.
FTX’s CEO Sam Bankman-Fried thinks esports and cryptocurrency have a lot in common: Just as esports bring competition to the digital world, so do cryptocurrencies bring money.
Riot’s Partnership Rules Become a Bump to TSM’s New Partnership
However, TSM’s new sponsorship deal falls under some restrictions because of Riot Games’ guidelines for partnerships. The latter company greenlit TSM to proceed with the deal but will neither allow TSM to use its new name nor let TSM players bear FTX’s logo on their jerseys during League of Legends and VALORANT competitions.
Therefore TSM will remain as TSM in Riot-sponsored events and will change to TSM FTX across all other games. The esports organization said that this was accounted for since the beginning, and LoL and VALORANT were excluded from the FTX deal.
Cryptocurrencies and esports seem destined to become intertwined, just like Bankman-Fried pointed out. Other organizations such as Dignitas and G2 have also signed deals with digital bank QNTMPAT and non-fungible token platform Bondly, respectively.
