Up-and-coming German squad BIG and esports betting platform Unikrn have signed a partnership agreement that includes an undisclosed investment in the team, Unikrn announced Thursday.

“Initially we were approached by BIG, asking for a sponsorship. We immediately fell in love with the idea of supporting a German all-star team," Unikrn CEO Rahul Sood said in a press release. "We were discussing sponsorships for multiple teams in the recent past, but somehow it never felt right. We even discussed the possibility of team ownership with some of our star investors.

"We met this dream halfway with BIG. We are not only partnering up with BIG, we are actually investing in them!"

BIG was formed after NRG Esports dropped German players Fatih "gob b" Dayik, Nikola "LEGIJA" Ninic, Johannes "tabseN" Wodarz. Those three players formed the core of BIG, and the team later bought out Johannes "nex" Maget's contract from mousesports and bought out Kevin "keev" Bartholomäus' contract from ALTERNATE aTTaX. The full roster was revealed on Jan. 2.

"We are happy to partner up with Unikrn, who were really excited to become part of our new team and the BIG family," gob b said in BIG's separate announcement. "Unikrn strongly believes in our vision and wants to help us in the background, which allows us to concentrate more on our training and the upcoming tournaments."

The team has only played a single, online, best-of-three series since they formed. They faced fellow German team mouz during the DreamHack Masters Las Vegas European qualifier, where they lost 2-1 and were eliminated.

The team will make their LAN debut at DreamHack Leipzig 2017 which takes place between Jan. 13-15, as they've been directly invited alongside Heroic, FlipSid3 Tactics and Fnatic Academy.