#brandlimitations

While strong branding brings many benefits to esports teams, it also comes with several limitations and risks. Branding takes a long time to build, costs a lot of money to maintain, and creates pressure for teams to constantly protect their reputation. If branding is handled poorly, it can damage a team’s image instead of improving it.

Fnatic is one of the biggest esports brands in the world, but their size can create problems. Because their brand is so well known, they're at risk of facing, High expectations from fans every tournament, pressure to always perform at a top level and heavy criticism online if results are poor.

Fnatic also spends large amounts of money on promotion, events, sponsorships, and content creation. Maintaining global visibility is expensive, and if results begin to drop, the brand can quickly lose reputation. Another limitation is that strong brands attract copycats, Fake merchandise, fake social media accounts, and unauthorised logos that can damage trust and confuse fans, even when legal protection is in place.

London Spitfire faces different branding challenges. Because they rely heavily on regional identity and London-based support, their international reach is more limited than global brands like Fnatic, this means, Smaller worldwide merchandise sales, Less global sponsorship power, and greater dependence on regional events and league success

If Spitfire perform badly for long periods, the connection with fans can weaken, especially because a large part of their support is based on competitive pride and city representation. They also rely heavily on OWL (The Overwatch League) exposure, meaning changes to the league structure or game popularity can directly hurt their branding.

Some of the main limitations across esports include High promotion costs, years required to build trust and recognition, damage to the brand spreads quickly online, public mistakes can go viral and harm the team's reputation, and strong brands attract intense competition. If a brand is damaged, it can take years to recover.

Fnatic’s branding is effective but expensive and risky because its global reputation can quickly decline after bad results in tournaments or championships. London Spitfire’s branding builds strong emotional loyalty but limits global commercial growth.

This shows that while branding is essential for success, it also creates pressure, financial risk, and dependence on performance. A team must be careful to protect and constantly support their reputation to keep community trust.

Grant, J. (2006) The Brand Innovation Manifesto. Chichester: Wiley.

Kotler, P. and Keller, K.L. (2016) Marketing Management. 15th edn. Harlow: Pearson.

Esports Insider (2024) Risks and challenges in esports branding. Available at: https://esportsinsider.com

Fnatic (2025) Brand Partnerships. Available at: https://www.fnatic.com