North Esports teams up with Pinnacle
North are well-known as being one of the top 10 Counter Strike teams in the world, and they have just announced an 18-month partnership deal with the betting brand, Pinnacle. The deal will see the Danish esports team’s shirts feature the Pinnacle logo and it’s just the latest partnership between a competitive gaming brand and a betting company.
Prior to this deal, North had been sponsored by the betting brand GG.Bet, but the new global partnership will see Pinnacle collaborating with the Copenhagen-based team on a range of online content.
© Pinnacle | North
By teaming up with North, Pinnacle will be gaining a huge amount of exposure as a result of the team’s excellent track record in the CSGO realm. In the past year, North have managed to get first position in top esports tournaments such as the DreamHack Masters Stockholm and the GG.Bet Ice Challenge.
The partnership deal is the latest in a long line of sponsorships that have helped North invest in their team. Alongside prior sponsorships with Adidas and GG.bet, the esports organisation are currently sponsored with the likes of the computer brand Shark Gaming, the French tech company Capgemini, and the Danish gaming peripheral firm SteelSeries.
North were only founded in January 2017, but they have already made a big impression on the Counter Strike scene. The esports organisation was formed through the efforts of the FC Copenhagen football and the Danish entertainment brand Nordisk Film.
Pinnacle were one of the first online bookmakers to feature esports betting odds back in 2010. Since then, the Curacao-based betting brand has encouraged the development of the fledgling sport through many sponsorship deals. This was seen earlier this year when it was announced that Pinnacle would be the Official Betting Partner of FACEIT’s ECS 2019 CSGO tournament, as well as the SpecialEffect gamers’ charity.
Pinnacle isn’t the first betting brand who have formed partnerships with an esports team. Betway have become closely linked with the Ninjas in Pyjamas and the MIBR competitive gaming organisations recently, and Rivalry even hosted their own esports tournament.
Despite this, there are some concerns about the close ties between betting companies and esports teams. Recently Valve asked that esports teams not enter into partnership deals with bookmakers for their Dota 2 and Counter Strike games. But whether this will have much impact remains to be seen.
