Overview
The OU Esports Club has always had a focus on philanthropy and raising awareness for our own communities. Our Community Outreach Director, Kara Brightwell, is an amazing personification of this energy. She was able to form a partnership with Make-A-Wish Oklahoma to build an event around raising awareness and donations for kids with 100% of the proceeds staying right in Oklahoma.
Back in summer 2019, Make-A-Wish International created a new campaign called Stream For The Wishes or Stream [FTW]. The focus of this expansion is to tap into the growing number of streamers, gamers, and communities that leverage broadcasting as part of their culture. Make-A-Wish Oklahoma had not activated in this campaign yet. We are the first!
Planning
Kara tapped the shoulder of our own production team, our community team, and our strategic partner, GetRECt, to plan the event and logistics focused around an up to two (2) days League of Legends tournament based on signups. Leveraging Noah Hassoun, OU’s Community Director, to facilitate tournament operations and Austin Nguyen’s, OU’s Production Director, production capabilities she brought full logistics online quickly.
We set an initial goal of $1000 for our campaign. We facilitated signups through Tiltify, the official donation portal for MAW, and set an entry fee of $2 for all competitors. Additionally, we established a one-off event Discord for communications, verification, and coordination and invited everyone to share marketing and message to draw more donations.
Sponsorship
Leveraging the collective energy we reached out to another partner we have called Uconnect Esports who creates a network of sponsorship opportunities through various brands. We were able to gain the attention and support of HyperX and they provided 5 copies of their brand new flagship “Alloy Elite 2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboards” for 1st place. Supplementing that Make-A-Wish Oklahoma provided us with vinyl notepads, keychains, and pens for 3rd place and tumblers for 2nd.
Prizing
HyperX's Alloy Elite 2 Keyboard
Execution
The tournament was facilitated completely in a virtual state on July 25-27, 2020. We had over 90 individuals (teams of 5) enter to compete. Through our production expertise and collaboration, we used both the OU Esports Club and GetRECt Twitch channels to broadcast a match from each bracket for day 1 on July 25th. Then we used just the OU Esports Club Twitch for semifinals and grand finals on Sunday the 26th.
In the signups, we had participants from Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri, Kansas, and Texas as well as an official high school team from Edmond, OK also. We concluded the tournament on schedule and raised $2000 for kids in our own backyard, doubling our initial donation goal of $1000! Congrats to Return of the Middlesticks, Sensei Squad, and Cosmic Flow for your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd placements in our charity event! Thank you to everyone who contributed and participated.
Day 1 GR Co-Stream
Day 1 OU Co-Stream
Day 2 Finals Stream
About Our Sponsors
Every 34 minutes Make-A-Wish® grants the wish of a child diagnosed with a critical illness in the United States and its territories. We believe that a wish experience can be a game-changer. This one belief guides us in everything we do. It inspires us to grant wishes that change the lives of the kids we serve.
Our partnership is with the Oklahoma chapter specifically which will keep 100% of all funds in the state of Oklahoma.
HyperX is the high-performance product division of Kingston Technology, the world’s largest independent memory manufacturer. Started in 2002, HyperX began with one line of high-performance memory and has grown over the years to encompass multiple product lines of memory modules, solid-state drives, USB Flash drives, headsets and mouse pads. Featuring best-in-class components that deliver superior performance, quality and aesthetic design for more than a decade, HyperX products are the choice of top-rated gamers, tech enthusiasts, and overclockers worldwide. From setting memory world records to achieving the most stringent product certifications, HyperX is committed to delivering reliable products with the highest performance standards.
About Our Partners
GetRECt is the premier League of Legends tournament operator in the Oklahoma region. Through their success, they have further expanded their reach and impact in our surrounding states. GetRECt was our very first strategic development partner starting the conversations for alignment and growth in Summer 2017. Aside from League of Legends, GR often hosts tournaments and fun programming to expand their offerings and continuously add value to the communities in the region.
PARTNERED SINCE 2017
Uconnect Esports was born from years of experience being in the exact same place we are but at Texas A&M. Through the very early days of collegiate development, their Owner & CEO has helped ease one of the biggest challenges for student organizational leaders to find resources that incentivize participation and bring the cool factor to campus events. By streamlining the sponsorship workflow to a form with very clear requirements for deliverables, Uconnect empowers student organizations to gain a lot of momentum almost immediately at the event conception phase of planning.
PARTNERED SINCE 2019
