ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sports Management, Marketing, and Economics
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1601238
This article is part of the Research TopicNavigating Sustainability: Addressing Esports Winter ChallengesView all 5 articles
Mapping Sponsorship Portfolios in Esports: Implied Strategic Continuity and Diversification in the League of Legends Pro League
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Physical Education, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China
- 2Graduate School of Social Welfare, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
- 3Independent person, Windermere, FL, United States
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Although corporate sponsorship is the primary controllable revenue stream in professional esports, its strategic management—particularly regarding continuity and diversification—remains largely under-theorized. This gap is notable given the volatility and rapid commercialization of top-tier leagues. Focusing on China's League of Legends Pro League, this study examines how sponsorship portfolios are structured and sustained over time. Using 2021–2024 data from 17 clubs and the league, sponsorship continuity was quantified via Jaccard similarity coefficients and diversification via Blau indices across 25 MSCI industry categories. Tencent-managed league-level portfolios were both stable and diversified, while most club portfolios were volatile and concentrated. Publicly held clubs achieved significantly greater diversification than private clubs, reflecting governance advantages. Club performance predicted greater subsequent diversification but not continuity. Positioning clubs within a continuity–diversification matrix revealed only a few in the "Strategic Resilience" quadrant, with many "At Risk." These findings suggest that clubs should prioritize a core set of enduring sponsors while expanding into diverse categories to reduce revenue volatility, strengthen bargaining power, and enhance resilience to market shocks. The study provides a replicable framework for evaluating sponsorship continuity and diversification, supporting evidence-based decision-making in esports managerial practice.
Keywords: advertising, Marketing, sustainability, Partnership, Portfolio, volatility
Received: 27 Mar 2025; Accepted: 19 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, AGUDAMU and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yang Zhang, yzhang68@crimson.ua.edu
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