Sex industry website YouPorn has been teasing it’s Twitter following as it tested the waters in search of a professional gaming team to sponsor. The porn site has put out feelers in the Dota 2, League of Legends and Hearthstone communities, compelling players to make themselves known.
The initial tweet from the YouPorn Twitter account got the ball rolling earlier this afternoon with great reception, asking simply,
“Do we have any competitive LoL, DOTA2, or HearthStone players following us? What do you think about YouPorn sponsoring a team?”
Thousands of retweets followed, along with hundreds of comments urging YouPorn to ‘do it!’, as well as requests for the site to expand their scope and further include one of Blizzard Entertainment’s best-selling PC games famous for its popularity in professional gaming, StarCraft.
Just two hours ago, YouPorn updated their Twitter correspondence with a select few teams all up for the opportunity to cash in on the sponsorship.
“Who would look best in pink?”
The professional teams up for approval appear to be SoloMid, FNATIC, ViCi Gaming along with their industry rival Team DK, Team Dignitas, Cloud9 HyperX, Counter Logic Gaming, Invictus Gaming, and lastly The Alliance.
The response from the gaming community has been slightly more rocky than that of the YouPorn following. Many gamers have noted that several studios, including Riot, prohibit X rated sponsorship programs, such as that offered by YouPorn. This decision appears to be based on the protection of minors within these select communities, in the hopes of limiting exposure to mature content at these large and far-reaching events. As well as this, many gamers are of the opinion that YouPorn sponsorship belittles the nature of professional gaming somewhat. At a time where several institutions are striving to have e-sports enter under the banner of professional sporting, there are those that see this move as detrimental to the efforts of the industry to progress.
We will have to wait and see how far YouPorn take this sponsorship program, and just how the notion of 18+ ad space will go down at these high profile e-sports events.