The sponsors · Game Guide

How the sponsors work

One of 6 sponsors backs your club each season and sets your objectives (Sponsor objectives).

The offers grow with the league: one sponsor in tiers 5 and 4, two offers in tiers 3 and 2, and three offers in tier 1. The pick is locked for the season.

If you have not picked by the first matchday, Casual takes the first offer and tells you in a letter, and Full opens the offers when you press play.

Each sponsor has a favourite demand and asks for it about twice as often as any other, so who backs you shapes your season.

From tier 3 up the sponsor's word sits in your tag on match screens, rzr.Gantry, and every rival club wears its own the same way (Your clan tag).

Its mark shows beside your objectives and on every letter it sends you, and its money is the guaranteed match fee (Sponsors & tickets).

Gantry Labs

The lab began as three postgraduates and a borrowed climate chamber.

Its first paying client wanted to know why a case ran hot. The answer was that the fan was backwards, and the invoice was small.

It sells the test rig, not the parts: a board goes in, runs for a week, and comes out with a report.

The first rig it ever built still runs in the lobby. It has never been switched off.

Dr. Ayo Adeyemi, Programme Director, writes every letter it sends you.

It likes to ask for 6 games for a player aged 18 or under, about twice as often as anything else, and from tier 3 up your tag carries Gantry (How the sponsors work).

Allay Energy

One can, one flavour, one colour of can, for its whole history.

The founders named the drink for calm and sold it to people who wanted the opposite.

It was on every LAN table before it was on any shelf, because the founders drove the crates there themselves.

The can still says calm on the side. Nobody has ever been calm after one.

Marco Venturi, Brand Activation Lead, writes every letter it sends you.

It likes to ask for a 4-match winning run, about twice as often as anything else, and from tier 3 up your tag carries Allay (How the sponsors work).

Merrow Bank

A regional bank, old enough to have had a marble counter.

It noticed, later than most, that the people queueing at its branches had stopped coming, and that the ones moving money online at two in the morning were the same age as the players on the stream.

So it opened a sports desk. The desk is one person and a plant.

The bank's own ping is measured in working days.

Katrin Mäkelä, Relationship Manager, Sports and Media, writes every letter it sends you.

It likes to ask for a finishing position, about twice as often as anything else, and from tier 3 up your tag carries Merrow (How the sponsors work).

Estuary Systems

Two brothers assembled machines in a shed by the harbour and drove them to customers in a van with the heating broken.

The first LAN they supplied ran forty rigs on one fuse. The second had an electrician.

Today the arena's machines carry the Estuary badge on the front.

The catalogue still lists a floppy drive as an optional extra.

Ingrid Solheim, Partnerships Manager, writes every letter it sends you.

It likes to ask for 5 home wins, about twice as often as anything else, and from tier 3 up your tag carries Estuary (How the sponsors work).

Rivet Peripherals

It began as a mouse-repair counter at the back of a hardware shop, run by someone who kept saying the shape was wrong.

The founder drew a better one on the back of a repair ticket. The shape has not changed since, and the company calls that the feature.

One mouse, refined for years, and a cloth pad that outlasts the desk under it.

The pad ships with a page of instructions. Nobody has read it.

Petra Novák, Head of Sponsorships, writes every letter it sends you.

It likes to ask for a win over one named club, about twice as often as anything else, and from tier 3 up your tag carries Rivet (How the sponsors work).

Skerry Telecom

It laid its first cable to an island the big providers had skipped, because the founder's brother lived there and wanted to play at night.

The line held. The island's ping dropped from a number nobody says aloud to one they print on the van.

The next island asked.

The head office still answers the support line itself.

Rhona Baird, Community Manager, writes every letter it sends you.

It likes to ask for a finishing position, about twice as often as anything else, and from tier 3 up your tag carries skerry (How the sponsors work).