Lenovo Shifts Esports Strategy to Events Over Team Sponsorships, VP Volker During Says

Lenovo has restructured its esports investment away from individual team deals and toward whole-event partnerships, aligning the brand with competitions and the infrastructure underneath them rather than with any single roster. Volker During, Vice President and General Manager of Lenovo’s Intelligent Device Group for PCs and Smart Devices, laid out the reasoning in an interview with The Esports Radar, and the logic starts with a problem team sponsorship cannot solve.

Back one team, and you have already chosen a side against everyone else’s.

Why Not Sponsor Teams

Lenovo has history here. It maintained a strong presence in esports through direct deals with organisations including G2 and Complexity, and Brazil’s FURIA remains part of the portfolio. But the core of the strategy now points at events like the Esports World Cup, under a multi-year partnership with the Esports Foundation.

During’s argument is that team deals work precisely by being narrow. They reach highly specific, dedicated communities, which suits a brand with a narrow product line, but Lenovo’s range is not narrow. “We want to support the sport as a sport,” During says. “We do not want to focus on single teams, or a single city, or a single country. For us, what we want to do is just address all gamers.” Because fans naturally favour their own rosters, sponsoring one inherently polarises the audience, so an ecosystem-wide approach across titles as varied as Counter-Strike 2, League of Legends and Chess is the only way to speak to the whole spectrum at once.

The company is also explicit that it does not want to be a passive logo. “We don’t want to just say we give money and something happens,” During explains. “We really want to become a partner, in the end, be an ambassador of the sport to drive the sport and support the sport.”

Hardware in Play as the Pitch

The mechanism that makes the events strategy work is the equipment itself. At this year’s Esports World Cup, every competitor across the seven-week competition plays on Lenovo monitors, with PC players also using Legion Tower 7i and Tower 5i desktops.

“A tournament like EWC, where the gamers are really playing with it, it’s just the most authentic way, honestly, to bring your hardware across,” During says. “It’s not telling stories; it’s real authenticity.” That distinction is the whole case for spending on events instead of jerseys: a logo on a shirt is a claim, whereas a monitor a professional is winning on is a demonstration.

It cuts the other way too. Supplying equipment such as the visual displays introduced at this year’s EWC gives Lenovo a real-world testing ground, letting it learn from the demands of professional play and adjust its technological standards accordingly. The sponsorship doubles as product research.

The Formula 1 and FIFA Playbook

None of this originated in gaming. Lenovo, which is marking the 10th anniversary of its Legion gaming brand, is applying to esports the same methodology it uses across traditional sport. In Formula 1, Lenovo hardware manages the data centres and race transmissions. At the FIFA World Cup 2026, the company assisted in developing new camera views for referees, which became part of the main live broadcasts.

In each case the pattern is identical: supply the technology the competition actually runs on, rather than buy space on it. “The company really started to go and say we are ambassadors of sports that are united,” During says. “And of course, we are supporting sports where we can create value with our technology.”

Marketing by Not Marketing

The consumer-facing side follows the same instinct. Speaking at the Esports World Cup’s opening ceremony press conference, Lenovo’s Global Marketing Head of Gaming, Karan Kapur, put it bluntly. “I think the best way to market a gaming brand is to not market it,” he said. “Also, to be extremely conscious, we know gamers are allergic to advertising, me being one of them. We essentially let our creators, our streamers, fans, and teams talk for themselves, and, quite honestly, the word Legion literally means community. And ‘just don’t market’ is the best way to market.”

At the event itself the Lenovo stand was among the busiest, with fans trying the new Legion tech including the Pro Rollable concept and competing in reaction games for high scores and giveaways. There is no settled right answer to esports marketing, but with the Esports Foundation deal running multi-year, Lenovo has committed to finding out whether owning the infrastructure beats owning a jersey.