There are many organizations out there. How can you still have trouble finding a sponsor? Why aren't any organizations are posting that they're looking for a team to sponsor? There are very simple answers to these questions. You just need to know the right place to go, or the right person to ask. In most cases, the sponsor will not go out of their way to help you, this means that you will most likely have to go to them.
Recently I have been getting messages from teams every day asking me to help them get a sponsor. At one point I was messaging NADotA's very own, Aaron "Spit-wad" Stern about available sponsors. At the time I felt that NADotA would be the best place to solve my problem, but now it's clear to me that there are literally hundreds of multi-gaming organizations that would be interested in DotA teams. I made this little tutorial mainly to stop the spam messaging, but also to help the growth and consistency of our community and teams. In the About section on NADotA, it says that we can help you get a sponsor. I believe this is now true.
A statement from Aaron "Spit-wad" Stern:
"There's always stuff available if you're willing to search for it. You should be more concerned with getting a solid team before getting a sponsorship. There are by far more sponsorship options than there are team options."
What's the point of a sponsor?. There is no direct answer for this. Certain teams want sponsors for different reasons. Some want a private Ventrilo server, some want publicity with a known tag or organization, some want gaming gear, and some want to be sent to LANs. Sponsorships can help the growth of your team in many ways. In relation with Spit-wad's The Ultimate Flaw article, I feel that a sponsorship helps teams stay stable. With the exception of some teams (i.e: DeciSiVE, uGamers), teams are more stable when they have a sponsor.
Note: This tutorial has worked for me a few times. There are a few different approaches that I know of right now, and they may not work every time. Sometimes it may take weeks to find that organization that you've been looking for, sometimes months. Be patient, and remember that there's a sponsor out there for every team!
Approach #1:
1. Make an account at Gamesurge.
2. Join the sever, "GameSurge -> Random Sever".
3. Join the mIRC channel, #complexity.
4. Find users that are tagged (aim for the ones that have multiple users with the same tag, it's even better if it specifies their game within their name).
5. "Whois" a user from that tag and join their mIRC channel.
6. Type "!users" in their mIRC channel, (It'll come up with a huge list of members).
7. After that, message the user that has 500 access, they are 9 times out of 10 the CEO of the organizations.
8. Talk to the CEO, and work your magic from there!
Approach #2:
1. Go to Cevo.
2. Look at some Cevo-P teams, but in different games, i.e: CSS, CS 1.6, CoD 4, etc. They are usually multi-gaming teams / sponsors.
3. Find their team's mIRC channel. When dealing with organizations, their mIRC channel is almost always on Gamesurge.
4. Follow Approach #1 from step 6-8 .
Approach #3:
1. Think of old DotA teams that had sponsors... one's that are no longer sponsored.
2. Find their team's mIRC channel.
3. Follow Approach #1 from step 6-8.
This approach is a little more challenging, and is probably least efficient. However, it does work. There are many examples of how this works. A few examples include: Team Pandemic, (picking up Ohh Baby), mainLine gaming (picking up gg2u / Xero), and Area 51 Gaming (picking up D4L).
These approaches are by far the easiest ways to get a sponsor. Sponsors are available for both mid-skilled teams and high-skilled teams. Always remember to be professional when dealing with a CEO, no matter how casual they sound, make yourself seem professional - even if you're not. No organization wants bad mannered, or illiterate members. For example, I'm 14 and I deal with these CEO's on a day-to-day basis. I find that being mature and professional helps, and they all think I'm about 20 years old.
Spit-wad has also offered to have "the talk" with an organization if any team would like some help.
Also, a special thanks to desrow who gave me most of these tips about 4 months ago.
Comments
As an owner of a top e-Sports organization, I would like to offer one bit of advice:
You need to show that you can produce, that means three things
1) You need to be able to have at least a top 3 showing consistently to get a leading organization
2) You need to realize that picking up a team is a mutual agreement, you need to make it worth while, if you're not a top team, you need to do marketing, be public, get seen. This is clearly what PMS does (all girl clan with barely any top places to show)
3) Lastly, make sure you understand that most organizations work off of "SoW"s (Statement of Work), this means that events need to be planned out ahead, and your marketing value needs to be determined before approaching an organization.
I hope this helps!
Jeff "HunteR_" Hunter
Marketing Director
http://check6gaming.com
They better rep us well-- rofl
While I agree, there are hundreds of sponsors and multi-gaming organizations, I don't actually agree that it's easy to find sponsors(???). If you're looking for payment into Cevo-P and access to a private Ventrilo server, you're in luck. That's easy to find. If you want to go to one LAN in your area on their expense, though, your search for a sponsor is almost twice as difficult. Even teams that compete on international levels sometimes have trouble finding a suitable sponsor (suitable meaning fitting requisites such as gear and LAN accommodations).
The second point I want to address is the steps. First off, they were awesome and definitely the right way to find (note: FIND) an organization worth talking to. The only steps I don't agree with are steps 6-8, mostly 8 since 6 and 7 can be used for convenience purposes. If you're looking for things like payment into leagues, then yeah, a more leisure approach via IRC is probably the best way to go. However, if you're looking for more (ie. transportation to LAN tournaments), IRC messaging isn't going to cut it. Mostly because you're probably talking with the best of the best, or people who think they're the best of the best. You want to let them know you're serious about your team, and that your team is going to take the sponsorship seriously. My advice would be to send an email to the organization (email address can usually be found under 'Contact us' or 'The team' of the website, something like that) letting them know about your eSport ie. giving statistics about DotA and why DotA is worth their time, current team, history of the team ie. events/leagues participated in, etc. Might sound weird but even a Power Point presentation would work. I feel like a lot of people feel like the leisure approach, and for that reason sponsors often don't work out well for them. (If anyone wants an example of a sponsorship proposal, I can provide one for you.)
All in all though, good article. Very helpful and needed for developing teams. ;)
??profit.
WHAT THE
mikey??