Back in December we told you about Chinese gaming company, The9 (NASDAQ:NCTY), and its efforts to bring Firefall (from subsidiary Red 5 Studios) to Southeast Asia. At the time Tony Park, head of The9’s Korea branch, noted that there was not any marketing strategy for bigger countries like China or Korea. But yesterday all that changed, as The9 announced that it has entered into an endorsement deal with football star Nicolas Anelka and his new team, Shanghai Shenhua, with whom he signed a few weeks back.
The agreement with Anelka is a one-year, worldwide endorsement deal worth 2.7 million euros ($3.4 million) for the 32-year-old Frenchman. The deal with Shenhua is for two years, costing The9 RMB 32 million (just over $5 million). And now that the entire Shanghai Shenhua team will have Firefall emblazoned across their chests, it means huge visibility in a young demographic for The9. Chris Shen, VP of marketing at The9, commented on this:
A big portion of Firefall gamers are also soccer fans, most of whom are male, passionate about sports, and actively followers of entertainment stories of sport stars. We are going to implement the cross-marketing campaigns throughout the year that leverage the popularity of Anelka and Shenhua to enhance the brand awareness of Firefall among the target audiences in both China and the global market.
Firefall is still in private beta and has yet to officially launch. But we’re hoping that day isn’t too far off.
It’s not the first time that we have seen the gaming industry make its mark on sport here in Asia. A few weeks back we also saw Japanese mobile gaming company DeNA (TYO:2432) buy a majority stake in the Yokohama BayStars (now the Yokohama DeNA BayStars) baseball team.
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