With ESL’s 25th anniversary on the horizon in 2025, ESL FACEIT Group, the leading esports and video game entertainment company, is kicking off the celebration by unveiling a new brand campaign inspired by the community to remind fans that together, they are the beating heart of the new global sport.

With a global audience expected to reach 640m people in 2025, esports is continuously growing, and ESL is firmly placing fans at the centre of that growth—while also reasserting its undeniable heritage as the original and leading esports company in the world.

The brand campaign, “Live Legendary”, co-created in collaboration with Design Bridge and Partners, is built on the insight that ESL is the first esports brand to make heroes of the fans and celebrate their role in creating legendary experiences and driving a new sport category.

The visual expression of “Live Legendary” is a purposeful clash of historical versus modern visual cues, elevating featured content to legendary status. It features reimagined visuals, including an original font blending ESL’s current typeface with inspiration from traditional stone carvings and inscriptions—a nod to the fact that ESL has been at the forefront since the “dawn” of the industry. Each element of the identity creates playful tension between the old and new—historic with a futuristic twist. The imagery has been developed to spotlight and make heroes of the community, making them feel legendary.

The identity is brought to life through a new bespoke typeface called ‘Legendary’, developed from the original masterbrand typeface, ‘Legend’. This new headline typeface is inspired by stone-carved engravings, becoming a chiseled version of Legend, unique to ESL. The Legendary typeface is also used to create typographic backgrounds patterns in the identity by rotating the typeface 45° and using close crops of words that create a visual juxtaposition between the historically inspired typeface and contemporary graphic forms.

The creative platform maintains the equity of ESL’s distinct colour palette by utilising bright, modern, and contrasting colours, with a near-neon green as the primary, and an expanded palette of yellow and greys.

Raising the community to “hero” or ‘legendary’ status is achieved through the use of statue imagery. The statues are unique 3D scans of the real ESL community, captured and then rendered as 3D marble statues. It’s a playful twist on classical statues of ancient heroes, updated for the modern age. The statues bring authenticity to ESL’s community-centric approach, literally putting fans at the heart of the visual expression. This is supported by a set of bespoke content frames and icons that have been created to pay homage to ESL and celebrate the community and the games they love.

Launching in conjunction with IEM Cologne, one of EFG’s most iconic tournaments where the world’s best Counter-Strike 2 squads face off for one of the most prestigious titles and a $1m prize pool, the campaign invites fans worldwide to embark on a celebratory journey honouring the impact the company has had in consistently shaping the world of esports.

Fans will get their first glimpse at the all-new look during IEM Cologne, and will be able to experience a unique stage takeover on Friday, August 16th. They are also encouraged to participate in the Walk of Legends on Saturday, August 17th, alongside legendary community champions as they mark into the LANXESS arena to kick off IEM Cologne’s semi-finals.

“We know from first-hand experience that the best way for fans to fall in love with esports is to actively participate in the brand, and we’ve been creating best-in-class opportunities for them to do just that since 2000. With that undeniable heritage in mind, Live Legendary positions esports as the next frontier of fandom, uniquely situated as the intersection of competitive gaming, entertainment and culture. Legends are forged at ESL tournaments—and have been for more than two decades—which is why we encourage all of our fans to play their part by providing Gen Z and Gen A a place to connect with their friends and co-create alongside their favorite heroes. We aim to elevate the voice of our players and fans, in everything we do. We look forward to continuing to grow our global audience of 225m fans and helping players and fans around the world fall in love with this global sport as it becomes a leading form of entertainment.”

— Fabio Tambosi, Senior Vice President of Marketing, ESL FACEIT Group

“Live Legendary is a new creative platform that reclaims ESL’s heritage as a leader in moving esports into the mainstream and making heroes of not just pro players, but also ESL fans. This is a significant and exciting chapter in ESL’s journey to the top, and we are proud of the part we have played in helping to make ESL the category-defining esports entertainment brand.”

— Marta Swannie, Creative Partner, Design Bridge and Partners