PES League.

TL;DR?

✔ Online and offline tournaments

✔ Coordinating over multiple time zones

✔ Full and comprehensive logistic management

✔ Brand sponsors and partnerships facilitation

✔ Bespoke website and routine updates

✔ Comprehensive social media strategy

✔ Worked with influencers, talent and influential brand community members

✔ Video editing

✔ Broadcasting to multiple channels in multiple languages

✔ Bespoke merchandise

THE NEW PES LEAGUE

With over 1,200 goals scored in 314 games, impressions exceeding 66 million, streamed in four languages across multiple streaming platforms, culminating in over 10 million minutes watched – PES League was back, and firing on all cylinders.

Following Konami’s direction, Jelly coordinated and delivered the biggest PES League international esports tournament using all of our in-house skills, knowledge and expertise. We managed the whole event’s online presence, tournament coordination and talent management.

While preparing for the event, it was necessary to work within certain Client-led parameters. However, these were successfully negotiated, and we were still able to deliver the following two seasons, resulting in an offline World Finals across two different competitive styles, 1v1 and Co-Op (3v3).

The national finals included online tournaments split across PC, Xbox and PlayStation networks, with the coordination of multiple players and staff across several international time zones. Our offline national finals were carried out with the support of local brand sponsors such as Gamestop in Germany and Musimundo in Argentina; the winner from those offline national finals won a place at the offline Regional Finals.

This year saw a notably increased number of sponsored and partnered players; this shows the strength of the PES League brand and something our esports experts wanted to harness, support, and engage with. We endeavoured to work closely with Player Managers and sponsors, resulting in the first-ever PES League tournament season where players were able and encouraged to wear their sponsored esports jerseys. To ensure a fair and equal playing field, we provided clear guidelines and structure to the Managers whilst being understanding of their role within the tournament.

Using our event management and logistics team, we delivered the offline Regional Finals in Argentina, Liverpool, Mexico City, Porto, Tokyo and London; this resulted in over 650 flights booked. Delivering across the world in South America brought its own challenges with technology restrictions and limited availability.

Our in-house web development team managed and maintained a website showcasing the complex tournament structure, providing results and releasing news at every key moment during the tournament season. The website was translated into over 16 languages to ensure it was accessible to all.

Communication was a key factor in our success, not only for our Japanese Client or our talented competitors, but also with our audience and the wider public. Our in-house social and community team created and realised a comprehensive social media strategy, liaising with all players, player managers and their sponsors to ensure our content generated interest and positive engagement across all channels and platforms. During the offline events, our team provided clear and exciting content, including real-time clipping and administrating competitions and engagement via Twitch Drops.

Utilising homegrown talent has, and will always be, at the core of our ethos as a company; therefore, we looked for and worked with influencers and known PES community members to supplement our broadcast and social content. We spent time with the players before each Regional Final creating video player profiles, giving our team of elite and skilled video editors mere hours to turn around from capturing, cutting to publish.

Throughout the season, our Business Development managers brokered and managed multiple brand partnerships with GT Omega Racing, ASTRO Gaming, Philips Hue, PlaySeat, Scuf Gaming and Red Bull for their products to appear at the PES League Regional and World Finals.

Our content not only was broadcast on PES League channels but also featured on GINX TV, Globo esports and TNT Sports – international sports and esports news outlets.

Overcoming logistical, language and legal barriers to ensure a smoothly organised and successful esports tournament took over a year of planning and execution with over 50 members of staff. Eliga Sul Stars and Usmakabyle may have won the trophies… but we conquered the League.

PES LEAGUE LEGACY

Konami wanted to connect fans of its Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) series and give them a platform to compete with players all over the world.

In response to this brief, our digital development team created PES League: the official UEFA Champions League esports event. PES League was an online tool which allowed players to challenge their friends and compete against others across the world.

The site boasted features such as interactive user profiles, direct messaging, points accrual systems, and player achievements, offering players a range of opportunities and events (online and offline) throughout the season to increase their local and international ranking.

PES League worked as an online entry point and tournament system for players wishing to compete in the PES League Regional & World Finals. The PES League system communicated directly with the game’s online servers, allowing scores from online matches to automatically update on PES League profiles. This communication was vital in ensuring a fair and structured ranking system, mitigating margins for human error or opportunities to cheat the system that would come with traditional data entry. PES League boasted over 800,000 individual members.

PES LEAGUE LIVE

Using our state-of-the-art in-house studios, we launched a Pro Evolution Soccer live-stream to boost community engagement and awareness of the brand.

PES League Live was a fortnightly Pro Evolution Soccer live-stream which ran throughout the PES 2017 season and was presented in the Jelly studios by our very own in-house talent. Designed to actively engage with the PES community, PES League Live served to communicate brand messages on an ongoing basis for the client. This worked to mitigate the longer waiting times between seasonal events and announcements.

Using their expert knowledge of the game, Jelly’s community managers Graham Day and Toby Lee developed, scripted, and hosted each episode of PES League Live. The live stream was broadcast across the world’s top streaming platforms – Twitch, YouTube and Facebook Live – reaching a combined audience of 6 million over the course of the season. Each episode was populated with content such as highlight videos and summaries from events; in-game analysis and strategy guides; and all the latest PES information and announcements.

PES League Live marked the first-ever regularly scheduled content to come from the brand-new Jelly Studios.

Contact us to find out more about how you can use Jelly Studios to boost your brand awareness and community engagement.