Blue Star Capital’s Guild Esports signs global £4.5m sponsorship deal

Post date Jan 2022

Blue Star Capital’s (BLU) investee company Guild Esports has today announced that Bitstamp, the world’s longest-running crypto exchange, has signed a three-year global sponsorship deal for £4.5m as its exclusive official cryptocurrency exchange partner.

Guild Esports, which is co-owned by David Beckham and is the first esport organisation to list on London’s stock exchange, said the sponsorship will commence at the end of the month. 

To date, it is the largest sponsorship deal secured by Guild Esports and as a result, the company expects it to generate annual revenues of £1.5m over the three-year period. 

As part of the agreement, and as advised by Guild Esports, Bitstamp will be given marketing rights and prominent exposure across the Guild’s team jersey and will also appear across social and digital content featuring the Company’s pro-players and content creators. 

The Company explained within its statement today that Bitstamp’s logo and brand will also be integrated at its new flagship London headquarters which are expected to open in early 2022.

Guild said it intends to collaborate with Bitstamp over the next three years ‘on a number of projects’ aimed at enhancing the Company’s fanbase and Bitstamp customers’ experience.

Last month, Guild confirmed that its shares had started trading on the OTCQB Venture Market after it received the go-ahead from the OTC Market Group Inc. It said US investors could now have the opportunity to share in Guild’s growth “as the esports market gains momentum.”

The Group said its reason for seeking the listing was to make Guild available to US markets in order to gain access to a broader investor base and enhance its visibility in North America.

Kal Hourd, CEO of Guild, said: “Guild is thrilled to begin trading on the OTCQB Venture Market. The cross-trading of the ordinary shares from London will provide the Company with increased access to US institutional and retail investors and a broader shareholder base.”

David Beckham, who is a co-owner of Guild, said: “It has been great to see Guild start to make its mark with top rankings across all teams and some great commercial partners like Subway and Samsung. It will be exciting to see this next stage in Guild’s development.”

Guild Esport’s investors include London-listed Blue Star Capital. To date, the investment company, which is focused on investing in new technologies, has invested around £0.706 million in Guild Esports, and holds around a 5.95% of the issued share capital of Guild.   

Guild was admitted to the Official List and started trading on the standard segment of the London Stock Exchange in October 2020 to take advantage of the growing esports markets.   

Blue Star says the esports market is experiencing significant growth. In 2020 it was estimated at c.495m viewers and is projected to reach around 646 million viewers by 2023.   This is expected to result in revenues growing over the same period from $950m to $1.60bn.