All-girl gaming clan PMS has landed a sponsorship deal with WITI (Women in Technology International) — members of the clan are pictured above with David Leighton, the president of WITI — and will be acting as "gaming ambassadors" to further WITI's mission of encouraging women in technology. This sort of clan sponsorship is in a different league to professional gamers winning huge pots of money at prize tournaments, and may encourage gaming groups to seek out partnerships of their own.
PMS and WITI are an obvious fit—the clan’s raison d’?e is to provide a welcoming environment for female
gamers, and encourage women to get into gaming, which is one avenue of outreach for women in technology programmes.
Debates about the reasoning behind such programmes aside,
the clan have found an unusual alliance—their professional team will be sponsored but the sponsorship is also going to
benefit every member of the 400+ strong group.
How can other clans or teams benefit from this? Using this example as precedent, perhaps there are organisations or
companies that fit your clan as well as WITI fits PMS. Professional gamers are often sponsored by hardware
manufacturers, for example, and game exclusively on those platforms. If your clan has come together because of a common
cause, then there may be someone with a product to sell that relates to you—teaming up with a local business if you’re
a geographically-united clan, for instance. With gaming creeping further and further into the public eye, businesses
that were not interested a year ago may be all ears now.
However, sponsorship isn’t available to just anyone who asks for it. PMS have spent time and a lot of their own money
building up a brand and a reputation, and that’s what the sponsors are buying. Work out what product you’re trying to
sell to the sponsors and present a valid business case to them, and they may just lap it up. If nothing else, you have
a group of gamers who may be willing to work at events for the potential sponsor, demonstrate their products on stands,
run tournaments in their name, etc—clans like PMS started their long path to exposure with small-scale event
sponsorship like this, and have built up their portfolio over time, so it certainly is possible.
