Overwatch League Left Bes Sponsor: T‑Mobile Terminated Contract With Activision Blizzard
Telecom T-Mobile appears to have dropped its sponsorship of Activision Blizzard's Overwatch League and Call of Duty League due to disagreements from the game's publisher. против who was recently sued by California regulators on allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination.
The T-Mobile logo has been removed from sponsorship lists. Overwatch League, so и COD League . The mention of T-Mobile has also been omitted from recent tweets from the Overwatch League Twitter account and from a recent broadcast.
T-Mobile was previously listed as the official 5G sponsor of the COD League and offered "T-Mobile Weekly Drops" to fans. However, T-Mobile appears to have canceled the latest 5G T-Mobile Drop without explanation.
A more obvious indicator of T-Mobile's decision comes from the Call of Duty league, where during a recent game involving the New York Subliners, that team wore stickers over their jerseys, apparently to hide the telco logo (they also used duct tape to less elegantly hide Draft Kings sponsor logo).
T-Mobile still featured in the guide 2021 Overwatch League Awards , which has the T-Mobile Perks logo but in a tweet posted Monday by OWL about these benefits, the sponsor is not mentioned.
Similarly, the T-Mobile-sponsored Overwatch League team New York Excelsior is no longer naming the telco as one of its official partners in the recent matchup between NYXL and Shanghai Dragons.
The Overwatch League Partners page still lists Xfinity, IBM, Coca-Cola, State Farm, Cheez-It, Pringles, and Teamspeak as sponsors as of Tuesday. Call of Duty League partners include the US Army, Astro, Zenni Gaming, Scuf, Mtn Dew Game Fuel, and USAA Insurance.
In July, Activision Blizzard sued the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) for creating a "fraternity culture" that promoted gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Several top executives, including former Blizzard president J. Allen Brack, were named in the lawsuit for being aware of and facilitating the alleged behavior. The DFEH said it conducted a two-year investigation into Activision Blizzard before filing a lawsuit.
Immediately after the trial Activision Blizzard made an official statement, which stated that the lawsuit included "misrepresented and in many cases false descriptions of Blizzard's past." Activision Blizzard chief executive (and former homeland security adviser to George W. Bush) Frances Townsend called the lawsuit "truly irresponsible and baseless" in a statement that has since been criticized by current and former employees. Thousands of Activision Blizzard employees signed a letter with requesting that Townsend step down as executive sponsor of the women's network. Following this letter, Activision Blizzard employees in California and elsewhere left the job in protest of the management's response.
Tuesday J. Allen Brack steps down as president of Blizzard Entertainment . He will be replaced by Jan Oneal and Mike Ybarra, who will lead the company.