Comcast today announced official Xfinity brand sponsorships with ESL, the world’s largest esports company, and Evil Geniuses (EG), the most successful esports organization. As part of these new partnerships, Xfinity will have branding opportunities at industry broadcasts, tournaments and events, and will outfit EG’s training facilities with Gigabit Pro Internet service and the company’s flagship video product, Xfinity X1.

The esports industry is expected to surge to more than 145 million participants and viewers by 2017 and the total number of consumers worldwide that are aware of esports will surpass 1 billion people this year.

"esports is the competitive playing field for the digital age and we’re proud to align our brand with an industry and a team that is so steeped in technology," said Todd Arata, Vice President of Brand Marketing at Comcast. "Broadband and video innovations have made esports more popular and more accessible than ever. We’ll work closely with ESL and Evil Geniuses to put fans even closer to the action through our Xfinity products and services."

As an official ESL partner, Xfinity naming and branding will be integrated immediately in Thursday’s Halo Championship Series: Pro League Season 1 and this weekend’s Heroes of the Storm Live Finals in Los Angeles. EG training facilities in Alameda, CA and Bloomington, IL will be installed with Xfinity products and branding will also appear on team jerseys, social channels, during live streams and across all player appearances.

"The internet is core to every gamer, and Xfinity offers players the fastest internet speeds in America while giving fans a platform to enjoy esports content on any device," said Craig Levine, CEO of ESL North America. "In working closely with Comcast, the esports tournament viewing experience will continue to evolve as we enable fans to get closer to the sport by sharing more information about their favorite players and teams through their products and services."

"We're proud to help usher Comcast into the esports space," says Kelby May at GoodGame with Evil Geniuses. "Comcast is an industry leader that is providing our organization with tangible, authentic benefits to our operations. Through this partnership we're able to provide our Halo team with a team house in Illinois and outfit that location as well as our current housing location in the Bay Area with unmatched fiber internet. The guys are super excited to get access to this service and put it to work!"

"We've come a long way from playing on spare CRT monitors," says Clinton Loomis, player for Evil Geniuses' Dota team. "I started playing on dial up, so as far as sponsor perks go, having Xfinity multi-gigabit Internet speeds at our gaming house seems pretty surreal. I'm looking forward to using it and seeing what the buzz is all about."