Chipotle teams up with the world’s biggest esports tournaments

All gamers will know that tacos and burritos make for some of the food best-suited to staying fully fuelled when gaming. Now Mexican food and esports are looking to have a much closer relationship as the Chipotle Mexican Grill brand have made moves to sponsor some of the biggest esports tournaments in the world.

© Chipotle

Just this week it has been revealed that the Chipotle brand name will be very visible at some of the top-level DreamHack and ESL gaming events throughout 2019. In addition to this, Chipotle will be unveiling their own amateur esports contests that could reward the winning gamers with a year’s worth of burritos and tacos.

Chipotle will become the official partner of the DreamHack Masters in Dallas that runs from 31 May to 2 June 2019. Plus the fast-food brand will also be the presenting partner of the DreamHack Open event in Atlanta from 15 to 17 November, and they will also team up with the Intel Extreme Masters tournament in Chicago later this year.

This strengthens Chipotle’s presence in the esports scene as it aims to make its brand much more closely linked to the vibrant competitive gaming world. Chipotle had already made waves when they sponsored legendary esports teams like OpTic Gaming and Team SoloMid in the past, but these partnership deals are a big step up.

By allowing the acclaimed esports company, REV/XP, to handle the marketing strategy for the project, Chipotle will be well-placed to achieve maximum brand visibility at three of the largest esports tournaments in the 2019 competitive gaming calendar.

However, Chipotle are also going ahead with their plans to develop their own competitive gaming tournament. This will see the Chipotle Challenger Series introduced at the DreamHack Dallas and Atlanta events. Although the games involved haven’t been revealed just yet, amateur gamers will be invited to take part in the contests and win a Challenger Series trophy, plenty of branded merchandise, and a year’s supply of Mexican food courtesy of Chipotle.

In addition to this, the DreamHack tournaments will also feature Chipotle-branded VIP areas that include special players lounges with free food. Chipotle’s esports campaign kicked off in Las Vegas on 12 April where players at the Rank S Combine gaming event at the MGM Grand could relax and unwind in the special Chipotle VIP lounge.

By teaming up with the world’s biggest esports tournaments, and launching their own amateur gaming contests, Chipotle are going in hard to make sure that they form close associations with the esports world. In the past few months, we have seen fast food titans like McDonald’s sponsoring ESL tournaments in Germany, whilst Taco Bell have even provided free food to the Indie Game Garage. All of which shows that there is plenty of scope for forward-thinking food brands to get involved with the rapidly growing esports industry that is tipped to hit the $1 billion mark in 2019.