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A Chinese carmaker now sits where a German one sat for eight years. The League of Legends Pro League, the Chinese league known as the LPL, has added BYD as an official partner for its 2026 season, The Esports Advocate reported on June 6, 2026. The deal runs through BYD Ocean, the group's product and retail brand for electric and plug-in hybrid cars.
The Esports Advocate's report carries one claim above the others: this is the first time a Chinese automotive brand has sponsored the league. Neither the price nor the length of the agreement has been made public.
The Esports Advocate, reports of June 6, 2026 and January 12, 2026.
What BYD has signed
The designation is official partner of the LPL for the 2026 season. The Esports Advocate ties it to BYD Ocean Series, which it describes as BYD's product and retail brand for new-energy vehicles, a term that covers battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars. The league is a League of Legends competition: two teams of five players meet in Riot Games' strategy game, and the LPL is the circuit in which China's professional teams play all year.
What the companies have not said is as clear as what they have. The Esports Advocate writes that financial terms and the length of the agreement were not disclosed. Its report does not describe any activation, the trade's word for what a sponsor does on site or on screen, and it names no executive.
One set of figures circulates with the announcement, and it does not come from the league. The Esports Advocate attributes to Chinese media two sales numbers for the Ocean Series: more than 6.2 million vehicles sold in total since the range was launched, and more than 2.22 million in 2025. The outlet presents both as reported by Chinese media, not as figures it checked or that BYD gave it.
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BYD does not open a new category. It fills the one a carmaker held for most of the league's commercial history. Mercedes-Benz began sponsoring the LPL in 2018 and became the league's chief partner in 2019, The Esports Advocate reported on January 12, 2026. That day's report was built on a document: the sponsor list for the first part of the 2026 season, published by TJ Sports, the company that operates the league.
The list held seven brands, and Mercedes-Benz was not one of them. Two other names of earlier seasons were missing as well, OPPO and Intel. The Esports Advocate, which headlined its report as the end of an era, said the German brand had supported the league for more than eight years. It gave no reason for the departure, and it noted that the effect on Mercedes-Benz's ties to Riot's international tournaments was unclear.
The same report looked beyond China. Mercedes-Benz Korea has sponsored the South Korean team T1 since 2023, and The Esports Advocate said it had confirmed that the carmaker's logo was missing from T1's jerseys.
No carmaker appeared on the list reported on January 12, two days before the season began on January 14. The Esports Advocate's report of June 6 comes about five months after that list.
- 2018Mercedes-Benz begins sponsoring the LPL.
- 2019The German carmaker becomes the league's chief partner.
- 2021The league reaches 15 partners, its highest count.
- January 2026The sponsor list for the first part of the season holds seven brands. Mercedes-Benz is not among them.
- June 2026BYD is added as an official partner of the league for 2026.
A sponsor list half the size of 2021
The change of carmaker comes on a shorter list. The Esports Advocate's January report set the seven brands of 2026 against the league's commercial peak: 15 partners in 2021. Of those 15, two were still on the list published in January: Warhorse and AutoFull. The other five brands of the January list were not partners in 2021.
Related readExplainer: How the Esports World Cup's Club Partner Program Works| List | Brands | Count |
|---|---|---|
| 2021, the peak | Mercedes-Benz, Nike, Momchilovtsi, KFC, Harbin Brewery, Wahaha, Warhorse, OPPO, Suning, Lenovo Legion, TT, Liepin, AutoFull, Razer, Intel | 15 |
| January 2026 | Jing Dong, Li-Ning, Durex, Skymotor, TCL, Warhorse, AutoFull | 7 |
| Added in June 2026 | BYD, through its Ocean brand | 1 |
The Esports Advocate, January 12 and June 6, 2026. The January list covers the first part of the 2026 season.
The table shows how much of the 2021 group has gone. Nike, KFC, Lenovo Legion, Razer and Intel were all partners that year, and none of them is on the list of January 2026. The origin of the new partner is the point The Esports Advocate puts first: a Chinese carmaker, the first the league has had as a sponsor.
The league's money has changed in another way this year. Riot Games said in January that it was removing the prize pools of regional splits in the regions that take part in its Global Revenue Pool and redirecting that money, The Esports Advocate reported on January 8. Prize money at the three international tournaments continues to be paid from that pool.
A league that also lost two teams
Sponsors are not the only thing the league has fewer of in 2026. The LPL plays with 14 teams, down from 16, The Esports Advocate reported on January 7. FunPlus Phoenix, the world champion of 2019, left after TJ Sports bought back its place in the league, and stopped taking part in the LPL on January 1, 2026. Royal Never Give Up, a three-time winner of the Mid-Season Invitational, does not appear in the 2026 line-up either.
The LPL is a franchise league: a team holds a permanent place, called a slot, instead of earning it through promotion. A slot bought back by the operator is a place removed from the competition, and from what a league partner's logo is seen beside.
The 14 teams were split into three groups for the first part of the season, according to Sheep Esports' presentation of the format, published on January 3. Six teams, Anyone's Legend, Bilibili Gaming, Invictus Gaming, JD Gaming, Top Esports and Weibo Gaming, formed the upper group. EDward Gaming, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Team WE and ThunderTalk Gaming made up the second, and LGD Gaming, LNG Esports, Oh My God and Ultra Prime the third. Each group played a double round-robin, every team meeting the others of its group twice, in best-of-three series, which are won by the first team to take two games. The four best teams of the upper group went straight to the final bracket. The two others, the four teams of the second group and the two best of the third played a preliminary stage for the remaining four places, and the last two teams of the third group were eliminated. Eight teams then met in a double-elimination bracket played in best-of-five series, where a team is out after its second defeat.
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The LPL is not BYD's first step into competitive gaming. The Esports Advocate recalls two earlier ones. The carmaker sponsored Wuhan eStarPro, a team that plays the mobile game Honor of Kings; the team belongs to the eStar brand of NIP Group. BYD also appeared in the China against Europe showmatch that Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase held in 2025, where the most valuable player of the match received the right to drive a Yangwang U9, a supercar of the BYD group, for one year. The outlet specifies that the prize was the use of the car, not its ownership.
A league partnership is a different kind of deal from those two. A team sponsor buys a place on one jersey and follows that team's results. A showmatch is one evening. A league partner is attached to every match of the competition, whichever teams play. The Esports Advocate's reading is that the agreement gives BYD Ocean access to an esports audience that is already commercially developed, at a time when carmakers compete for younger buyers.
The season still to play
BYD joins a season that is well advanced. The first part ran from January 14 to early March and sent its winner and its runner-up to the First Stand, the first international tournament of Riot's year, held in São Paulo from March 16 to 22 with eight teams, two of them from China. Sheep Esports noted that the winner of that first part earned 80 championship points, against 20 a year earlier. Bilibili Gaming won the First Stand, and Riot's Global Power Rankings, the publisher's own classification of teams, placed the Chinese club first in the world on March 23.
Two international tournaments remain on Riot's calendar, both announced by the publisher on March 22. The Mid-Season Invitational, known as MSI, runs from June 28 to July 12 in Daejeon, South Korea, with 11 teams. The world championship, called Worlds, runs from October 15 to November 14 in the United States, with its final at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Those are Riot's events, not the league's, and nothing in the reports says that BYD's agreement extends to them. The partnership is with the LPL, for the 2026 season, and the companies have set out neither what follows that season nor what the brand will do at the league's matches before it ends.
The league changed carmakers in five months. What the new one pays, and for how long, stays between the two companies.
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