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Riot Games signs Mastercard as League of Legends sponsor as it fixes sexist culture

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

Riot Games announced today that Mastercard has signed on to become a global sponsor for the League of Legends’ esports for multiple years.

The global agreement is a first of its kind for Riot, and it underscores the growing importance of esports to global brands that want to reach the right demographic with brand advertising and sponsorships. Esports is still smaller than traditional sports when it comes to sponsorship dollars, but esports has huge numbers and it increasingly reaches young demographics who are harder to reach with other kind of entertainment media.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.