Origen has announced its first non-endemic partnership ahead of its participation in the newly rebranded League of Legends European Championship (LEC).

Not much is known about the deal outside of Origen’s flashy reveal video, however, the deal is a sign of intent from Origen who recently became part of RFRSH Entertainment, the holding company of CS:GO super team, Astralis and the BLAST Pro Series CS:GO events.

Audi and Astralis signed a permanent shirt sponsorship deal with Audi back in 2017, so the two working together, albeit via Origen is not a surprise. When the deal was announced, Audi’s Digital Manager, Jacob Thiesen, said that “The valuation of our initial partnership demonstrated some impressive numbers and effects and the co-operation with the team and RFRSH Entertainment was second to none”. With that in mind, alongside Astralis’ amazing 2018 success, Audi is probably smart to place faith in RFRSH Entertainment again in its League of Legends outing.

This past week also saw Audi partner with Chinese streaming site, Panda TV. As part of this partnership, Audi & Volkswagen will sponsor Panda TV’s new esports show, “Marvelous Esports”, which first aired in December. Audi also recently entered a partnership with FOKUS CLAN and Schanzer Esports, the esports arm of FC Ingolstadt 04 and has previously worked with Bayern Ballers Gaming, the NBA 2K esports team of FC Bayern.

Origen founder and current manager, Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martínez, is also a brand ambassador for Gillette, becoming the first esports player to do so. Origen starts its LEC journey on January 18th against LEC favourites G2 Esports.

Esports Insider says: Audi is one of the largest non-endemic brands who’ve become familiar around esports in the past, this latest deal should provide more evidence of the faith both Audi has in esports and the potential this industry has. Origen will now look to reward the faith Audi has shown in its team and deliver on the biggest stage in EU League of Legends. It’s clear RFRSH has leveraged the deal, previously made with Astralis, to move Audi from CS:GO into League of Legends. It’ll be interesting to see how this one pans out down the line.

Follow ESI on Instagram