Sem9

Fan Powered

TRUTH WELL TOLD

With a modest marketing budget, an eSports hotel grabbed the attention of its audience with a livestream software innovation designed to help aspiring pro gamers find sponsorships that only the elite few typically come by, driving a 230% increase in brand awareness and a 5x surge in website traffic for bookings.

DESCRIPTION

SEM9 Senai is Malaysia’s first eSports-themed hotel. Despite 1.5 billion potential gamers—customers—across APAC, its modest marketing budget meant limited awareness and bookings. To engage this advertising-averse audience, the hotel focused on the incredibly low odds (0.00000151%) of aspiring pro gamers securing brand sponsorships. Enter “The Fan-Powered Sponsorship”—a piece of software that empowered gamers to incentivize and sustain fan funding during live streams. Powering a first-of-its-kind streaming interface, it instantly displayed fans’ usernames as sponsor logos whenever they donate on Twitch, TikTok, or similar platforms.

Created in partnership with McCann Singapore, the solution disrupted the conventional eSports sponsorship model—helping gamers without brand sponsorships fund themselves. Beyond putting SEM9 Senai in the spotlight, it also opened up a new media space: a gamer-controlled platform that commercial brands could eventually tap into. Seeded through gaming communities, the initiative drove a 230% increase in brand awareness and a 5x surge in website traffic for bookings.

CLIENT

Sem9

BRAND

Sem9

REGION

APAC