Bybit Becomes an Exclusive Cryptocurrency Sponsor of NAVI, a Legendary Esports Club

Key takeaways:

• Bybit becomes an exclusive cryptocurrency sponsor of world-renowned esports team NAVI
• NAVI players and its fans will be a part of Bybit’s World Series of Trading 2021, a premier crypto trading event
• Bybit has additional plans for further expansion in the gaming industry, with new announcements coming shortly

Bybit, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world has announced it will sponsor a massively popular Ukrainian-based e-sports team NAVI. The multi-year deal will provide Bybit with exposure to a growing audience of fans that regularly tunes in to follow international gaming events.

Bringing the two rapidly growing industries together

NAVI (which is short for Natus Vincere, which in Latin means “born to win”), is one of the bigger e-sports organizations in the world. NAVI has a massive, 18.4 million strong fanbase and garners 15 million monthly views on its Youtube channel alone. The team competes in all major e-sport events across many different gaming titles, including CS:GO, Dota 2, FIFA, League of Legends, Apex Legends, and more.

Bybit is looking to engage the huge fanbase by organizing a unique crypto-centric event that will see NAVI fans and NAVI’s top players compete for a prize pool of $7.5 million in the Bybit’s World Series of Trading (WSOT) crypto trading competition. The registration for the event opens up on August 18.

As the team’s exclusive cryptocurrency platform partner, Bybit is in a unique position to introduce NAVI’s audience to the world of cryptocurrency. The two industries share quite a lot of similarities as the esports fans and crypto enthusiasts are technologically savvy, prepared for quick changes in their respective fields and not afraid of challenges that present themselves along the way.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many established conventions in a number of human experiences. Both sports and finance have witnessed the exponential pace of mainstreamization of two new entrants — esports and cryptocurrency.” - Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit

Here are some numbers to help put the pace of growth of the two sectors into perspective. According to analytics company Newzoo, the gaming industry will become a billion-dollar business in 2021, while the number of new gamers is expected to increase by approximately 200 million by 2024. Accounting for a young age of an average gamer, the industry is definitely on the rise.

Just like gaming, crypto is also a fast-moving industry that attracts young and tech-savvy. For reference, since being established in March 2018, Bybit has managed to grow its userbase to 2.5 million across 200 markets. Bybit ranks second in Bitcoin futures daily volume. In Q1 2021 alone, the exchange recorded more than $1 trillion in total trading volume.

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The NAVI sponsorship marks Bybit’s first foray into esports

Bybit’s partnership with NAVI is the exchange’s first step into the gaming industry. Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit had this to say about the monumental occasion for both companies:

“We are delighted to connect with one of the most iconic names in esports that provided 86.1 million hours of thrilling entertainment to audiences worldwide in 2020. As one of the fastest-growing start-ups built for crypto lovers, we are excited to sign on with NAVI, and are looking forward to unleashing the natural synergy between the crypto community and the athletes and creators in esports.”

Likewise, Alexander Pavlenko, CMO of NAVI sees the collaboration as an opportunity to bring together the cryptocurrency sector and esports:

“I believe that this was bound to happen. Cryptocurrency and esports have much in common: They are new, fast-growing and interesting to keep watch and learn. We shall strive to show esports fans the real value of digital-based communication by cryptocurrency platform Bybit and our team. Also, we want to represent the esports world to cryptocurrency enthusiasts as a point of their interest.”

In the future, Bybit has more plans in the pipeline in regards to further integration with the international esports community. Bybit will symbolically commence the partnership with NAVI in the upcoming WSTOT 2021. The exchange is planning on making additional announcements on other gaming industry related endeavors in the near future.