Esports Kings Tournament Draws Thousands of Gamers and Gen-Z Targeted Brands to NEPI Rockcastle Romanian Malls
NEPI Rockcastle
NEPI Rockcastle, premier owner and operator of shopping centers in Central & Eastern Europe, present in eight countries
Esports Kings Tournament Draws Thousands of Gamers and Gen-Z Targeted Brands to NEPI Rockcastle Romanian Malls
BUCHAREST, 01 August, 2023 – Thousands of gamers crowded into NEPI Rockcastle shopping centres across Romania over five weekends in June and July to watch local influencers compete in the ‘Esports Kings’ tournament and play CounterStrike:GO and League of Legends, two of the most popular e-sports games globally. Both games have a combined userbase of around 500,000 players in Romania, mostly among the Gen-Z age group, which attracted major consumer brands as sponsors of the NEPI Rockcastle event to reach this key, but difficult to access, demographic through traditional marketing channels. A study conducted by the Romanian Game Developers Association in November 2022, indicated that there are 7.8 million players of electronic games in Romania.
Roxana Baias, Group Head of Marketing at NEPI Rockcastle, said: “The success of our Esports Kings Tournament in the size of the crowds, and the marketing impact for the sponsoring consumer brands and partner retailers, dramatically exceeded our most optimistic expectations. Thousands of people turned up our shopping centres to see some of the leading Gen Z gaming influencers. They have combined followings of a couple million followers in Romania across all channels and this helped to greatly magnify the marketing around the event through the ‘digital halo’ effect of social media and by word-of-mouth. We call this ‘Fifth Channel Marketing,’ or the physical/digital hybrid mix going beyond the four channels of text, radio, television and digital, and engaging with the hard-to-reach Gen Z market to promote services and products. They are a key target for our product partners and retailer brands, as this age demographic will form the largest component of future consumer markets and already strongly influences the spending focus of their households.”
NEPI Rockcastle is the largest owner and operator of shopping centres by value in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, where economic growth, and fast-growing household purchasing power and retail sales, are strongly outpacing Western European countries even against a background of high inflation.
Romania is the company’s biggest market where NEPI Rockcastle has 20 shopping centres with 10 designated as ‘playground malls’ incorporating entertainment as central to the market positioning of the property. This concentration of retail/entertainment centres, which play a communal role in the cities and towns where they are located, and their draw as gathering places for Gen Z, makes them ideal locations for events like the Esports Kings Tournament. NEPI Rockcastle’s reach across the Romanian retail market make it the ‘go-to’ shopping centre owner and operator for the implementation of a Fifth Channel Marketing strategy.
Generation Z are those young people born in the late-1990s or early 21st Century. Consumer brands face challenges reaching Gen Z with their messages through traditional and social media marketing because they do not use these channels to the extent, or in the same way, that previous generations did. Gen Z will take the lead among consumer demographics in the decades to come and represents the markets of the future.
The Esports Kings gaming tournament rounds were held at NEPI Rockcastle’s shopping centres in Bucharest, with its Mega Mall in the capital hosting the final on July 15/16, Ploiesti, Braila, Constanta, Timisoara and Sibiu. An estimated 3,000 people crowded into the Braila Mall, in the highest attended round of the tournament, to greet their gaming influencer heroes. Sponsoring partners included global brands like Vodafone, Procter & Gamble and KFC and leading local companies such as Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR) (a subsidiary of Austria’s Erste Bank), and PRO TV, the leading television channel in Romania.
Some of the partnering brands also provided essential services which enabled the tournament to function, such as Vodafone with the high-speed internet access required to support an online event of this scale and PRO TV, the designated media partner for the event was covering the news on sport.ro and broadcasting the final live on their VOYO streaming platform.
A novel competitive twist to the registration process for Esports Kings also heightened pre-event interest in the tournament with an online master of ceremonies drawing lots for the 16 successful teams able to participate in each round among the hundreds that applied.
Bogdan Turcanu, Head of Marketing at Pro TV, said: “We have seen the momentum that Esports has gained across Romania and the region with a Gen Z target audience that is very relevant for our VOYO online streaming service. PRO TV’s aim is to drive awareness of VOYO in a community that is very loyal and trusts brands that understand their universe. The widespread availability of the Esports Kings tournament on the platform was also a very good trial opportunity for the product, because VOYO gave users the possibility of enjoying the event anywhere, in their control, on every possible screen size.”
Ruxandra Rau, Director Brand & Marketing Communication at Vodafone Romania, said: “Vodafone’s sponsoring of the Romanian e-sports industry is driven by our mission of supporting the digitalization of all our communities, to educate, and leave no one behind. We are among the early investors in the local esports industry through direct sponsorship of more than 30 esports events. We are a brand with strong ethics and social responsibility looking to support youngsters in our communities, to bridge the digital divide, and educate in any ecosystem, including gaming. We welcome all initiatives, just like Esports Kings, that support our vision.”
Ileana Cocias, Senior Brand Director, at Procter & Gamble, said: “We consider gamers to be the most vibrant prime prospect of our target audience for Old Spice (18-24 all). Esports Kings offered the perfect opportunity to engage them in a non intrusive way, which is very difficult for an endemic brand to achieve. The merge of the physical (malls where this audience spends their time) with their favorite activity as well as streaming of the final seemed like a natural space for communication.”
Key Statistics from the Esports Kings Tournament
Tournament winner: Team P?c?licii | Rudy Romania?
Prize pool: €15,000
Total event attendance in malls: 8,000 people
Users: 6,100 users
Registered teams: 390 teams
Hours of game play: 68 hours
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Social Media Results
Reach: 5,670,980 people
Impressions: 6,020,700 impressions
Likes: 1,500,100 likes
Messages received on social media: 300
YouTube Results
YouTube impressions: 5,910,900 impressions
YouTube views: 1,100,000 views
For further information please contact:
Media Contacts:
Bellier Communication
Emma Villiers, Bellier Communication T. +31 20 419 0901
Steve Hays, Bellier Communication T. +31 (0)6 5231 0762.
ABOUT NEPI ROCKCASTLE
NEPI Rockcastle (NRP.AS) (JSE.NRP) is CEE’s largest listed owner, developer and manager of shopping centres, owning over 2,000,000 m2 of high-quality modern retail portfolio across nine Central and Eastern European countries: Romania, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Lithuania. Its growth is being propelled through a €665 million development programme, accompanied by accretive acquisitions, with the company’s most recent purchases being Forum Gdansk Shopping Centre (Gdansk) and Copernicus Shopping Centre (Torun), both in Poland. NEPI Rockcastle benefits from two key strategic advantages – its unique portfolio of over 50 shopping centres, assembled over the past 15 years and its team of over 400 people who bring unparalleled expert local knowledge in retail property.
The company has also become a member of the European Council of Shopping Places (ECSP) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to consolidate its market-leading position in the retail real estate industry.
More information about NEPI Rockcastle at www.nepirockcastle.com .