Marketing and ONE Championship come together for Digital Marketing Asia conference in Thailand

Marketing magazine was proud to welcome and host ONE Championship (ONE) as the official headline sponsor at the recent Digital Marketing Asia conference in Bangkok, Thailand.

Our maiden conference in Thailand was further bolstered by our partnership with ONE, which is not only the largest global sports media property in Asian history, but also the largest producer of Millennial live sports content in Asia.

Carlos Alimurung, CEO of ONE Esports, delivered on the topic: Brand engagement through Esports and how it is changing the game.” He covered the growth of ONE Esports and expanded on how local brands can see themselves on its platform.

Hari Vijayarajan, group chief commercial officer at ONE championship, shared with Marketing on ONE as an engagement platform, its efforts to further add value to the sports ecosystem and its Esports efforts and initiatives.

Marketing: What are your views on sports as a brand engagement platform?

Vijayarajan: We believe that live sports, and the moments of magic that come with them, are powerful enough to ignite an entire nation by triggering passion points in millions of engaged fans. Take for example in 2017, when one of our Burmese athletes, Aung La Nsang, captured the ONE Middleweight World Championship – against all odds. To many, it may have looked like any other martial arts victory, but to the citizens of Myanmar, it was the country’s first-ever world champion in any sport.

His win united a nation, and he remains a highly celebrated local hero in his country to this day. Brands have the ability to capitalise on these moments and engage their target market by getting under the skin of these fans in an extremely unique and authentic way. Passion-point marketing is the true power of sports as a marketing platform.

Marketing: In your opinion, how then is ONE Championship adding value to the sports ecosystem in Asia?

Vijayarajan: ONE Championship is Asia’s largest and fastest growing global sports media property – putting Singapore and Asia on the world map. ONE is now the largest content creator for Millennials and Gen Z in sport in Asia. For the first time in history, Asia is “exporting” a global sports media property that is being consumed globally in 140-plus countries – while for decades, sports media properties such as NBA and EPL were “imported” from the west. So we are proud to be making history on this front.

We also feel a sense of ownership and pride to contribute to the growth of an Asian sport, right from the grassroots. This is why in the past year or so, we’ve introduced new content stacks such as the ONE Warrior Series and ONE Hero Series – our very own talent search and travel reality programmes to find the next local superheroes to unleash their greatness on the global stage and inspire nations. This localised content will allow us to engage with fans authentically, and at scale.

Marketing: With the recent introduction of ONE Esports into ONE Championship’s live events and platforms, how do you see this all coming together for your organisation?

Vijayarajan: We are truly excited about adding the ONE Esports content stack onto our content platform. ONE Esports aims to be the world’s largest Esports platform across gaming platforms, genres and titles. Esports and gaming are one of the fastest growing industries in the world, especially in Asia.

With ONE Esports, we see a unique opportunity to add value to the Esports community at scale by bringing our eight years of expertise in world-class localised storytelling, broadcasts and event production excellence, a strong understanding of sports and brand marketing, and established distribution relationships.

Our Esports content platform (www.oneesports.gg) has already seen massive traction in only seven  months – with over three million monthly unique visitors, making it one of the top five Esports platforms globally in under six months.

With an “always-on” calendar of qualifiers, invitationals, masterclasses and major tournaments across different genres and platforms in the next 12 months, we’re looking forward to exciting fans and brands across the planet with ONE Esports!

Marketing: What is your approach to ensuring success for brands and partners of ONE Championship?

Vijayarajan: In a nutshell, we are very results and KPI-driven when it comes to ensuring that our partner brands are successful. We understand that no two companies are the same when it comes to their brand/business objectives, so our offerings are usually highly bespoke and customised.

And it doesn’t end there. We believe that it is critical to measure the impact of our partnership campaigns. This is why we are data-driven in our approach to finding the right solutions, as well as substantiating them post-campaign with our clients and third party measurement partners.

Marketing: Lastly, what’s in the works for ONE Championship in 2020 and beyond?

Vijayarajan: As I mentioned earlier, Esports will be a major initiative over the next 12 months. On the martial arts front, we are very excited about further penetrating the India and US markets by deepening our broadcast partnerships with Star TV and Turner Sports, and continuing to break ground with new localised content and formats, and generating more engaging content for our fans globally.

For more information on partnerships with ONE Championship, visit www.onefc.com/partnership/ or email partnerships@onefc.com.