After two years of impressive growth, the Rainbow Six Siege eSports scene has received another boost in the form of a multi-year partnership deal with online payments services provider PayPal.
Growth of Siege
Not too long ago, the Rainbow Six Siege eSports scene was almost non-existent. Facing competition from established games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, and Call of Duty, it was a distant fourth in terms of competitive shooting games online.
The title had to battle against controversy too after players began threatening to boycott the game after Ubisoft revealed it planned to remove some content from the game to make it more appealing to the Asia market. However, after some focused and determined effort from Ubisoft and the Rainbow Six Siege team, the game overcame the early teething issues to become one of the world’s most popular eSports.
The Six Invitational
The game has continued to grow year on year, and it is a testament to Ubisoft’s determination to make Siege a successful eSport. At the start of 2020, Ubisoft hosted the Six Invitational event, and it proved to be a massive success with over five million hours watched over the whole tournament.
“Rainbow is a really weird animal. It’s a very hardcore tactical shooter with an incredibly high skill ceiling but when you look at the community, how they express themselves, it’s very diverse and warm. Coming in as a newcomer to Rainbow, to Ubi, it was eye-opening. This is not your typical shooter community. The passion and engagement was nothing like I have ever seen before,” Che Chou, Ubisoft Senior Director of eSports told Esportz Network.
Benefits For Players
As an online game, Siege features several potential micro-transactions mechanics that allow people to buy weapons and character skins to give them a unique look in-game. Having PayPal as the official platform to process those transactions adds an extra layer of safety and security for players.
On top of that, the game’s growth has also resulted in greater interest from the iGaming industry, with betting on eSports titles becoming more common. Especially in an environment when regular sports events are being postponed and cancelled. A large number of iGaming websites such as bet365 and Unibet are offering online betting with PayPal because of the high security for its players.
“We welcome PayPal as a key partner to accompany us to keep the Rainbow Six eSports scene growing. We are confident that PayPal will continue to provide the community with the amazing experiences and content they envision,” said Geoffroy Sardin, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ubisoft.
Partnership With PayPal
This steady and impressive growth began to attract several corporate sponsors’ eyes and, ultimately, resulted in PayPal and Ubisoft partnering up in November 2018. The pairing worked so well for both parties; the terms of the agreement have been expanded and extended to September 2022.
As part of the deal, PayPal will become a significant named sponsor to the Rainbow Six eSports circuit that includes tournaments in Europe and North America and the recently announced Rainbow Six World Cup. It will also strengthen PayPal’s role in the game’s community as it will become the official payment platform for transactions involving the game.
“Video games are at the heart of the digital industry and are expected to continue to grow to $200-billion over the next few years. eSports already has more than 92 million fans in Europe by itself and is expanding at a great pace with unprecedented community involvement. Working again with Ubisoft, a new exclusion to the community. I’m happy to be able to provide a unique experience,” said Jill Cress, vice president of consumer marketing at PayPal.