Like no other league before it, Turner Sports' ELEAGUE has made esports credible in the eyes of mainstream brands like Arby's and Snickers. On the heels of landing Snickers as ELEAGUE's "official chocolate bar," general manager Christina Alejandre spoke to Slingshot Esports’s Vince Nairn about what it's taken to get so-called "non-endemic" sponsors aboard the esports hype train.

She said the big brands aren't naive about what they need to do to be taken seriously by esports audience. "They know this community could feasibly just eat you up and spit you out," she said. "[Esports fans] have a BS detector. They will sniff it out if they think it is ... just this non-endemic brand coming in and slapping their name on it and not really kind of getting it. Arby’s didn’t want to put themselves in that situation, and none of our sponsors wanted to put themselves in that situation."

She said that though Arby's was cautious about sponsoring ELEAGUE's first season, a series of CS:GO-inspired ads featuring exploding sandwiches managed to do well enough with fans to win them over.

She recounted when the ads first aired online: "I remember ... the Twitch chat was like 'Sellout! Sellout! Sellout!'" she said. "And then they saw the commercial because that came up right after, and the commercials were catered to Counter-Strike, and then all of the sudden, you saw the Twitch chat [change]. You saw people tweeting about the Arby’s commercial. How often in stick-and-ball sports do you see people tweeting about a commercial outside of the Super Bowl?"

RELATED: ELEAGUE GM Christina Alejandre wants players to say, 'Holy s***, I made it to ELEAGUE'

ELEAGUE's market research supported their findings, showing that the ads drove an increase in likability in the target audience. Alejandre said that their success with Arby's was a big stepping stone for the league, and it helped them convince Snickers to sign on for Season 2.

"I think other non-endemic sponsors were seeing that Arby’s literally went all in, and instead of dancing around it, maybe we should go all in as well," she said. "... I think more non-endemic brands need to realize that and jump all in, because I think dipping your toe in does kind of pose that risk of you not really getting integrated."

With Snickers, ELEAGUE has created a similarly Counter-Strike-specific segment playing off the snack's "You're Not You When You're Hungry" brand positioning. The segment highlights the week's biggest misplays, which clearly wouldn't have happened if the player had a Snickers beforehand.

ELEAGUE Season 2 Group D kicks off Friday with Fnatic vs. OpTic Gaming and Team EnVyUs vs. Team Dignitas.

Sasha Erfanian is a news editor for theScore esports. Follow him on Twitter, it'll be great for his self-esteem.