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League/Tournament Brands:
- London-based team organization Excel Esports has hired Milly Preston as its head of marketing, who brings eight years of experience from traditional sports.
- Previously with Leaders, Preston was in charge of all strategic planning and tactical implementation of marketing.
- Excel competes in the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) and recently revealed a multi-year lead partnership with BT.
British esports organization Excel Esports has brought aboard Milly Preston as its head of marketing, who held the same position at Leaders (which is part of Leaders Group, the portfolio of which includes The Esports Observer) from 2017-2020. Preston enters the esports industry for the first time with eight years of sports marketing experience, and will now take a lead role in leveraging Excel’s partnership portfolio of commercial brands.
“Excel has the opportunity to cement itself as the British gaming culture brand,” Preston told The Esports Observer. “The roots are strongly and proudly in Britain but it has a view on the rest of the world too. The intent is to build Excel to become the most valuable exportable professional British gaming and entertainment brand and I think that is a really powerful asset and narrative to build over the coming years.”
While at Leaders, which produces conferences and content for the business and performance sides of sport, Preston oversaw the company’s marketing team and was in charge of multiple product rebrands and the development of a new automated segmentation strategy. She joins another colleague with years of experience in the sporting world, Robin McCammon, who joined Excel as chief commercial officer after 18 years at adidas.
“2020 is a momentous year for Excel. Our ambition is to make Excel an iconic British brand that is globally recognized and with fantastic new additions to the team we are creating an infrastructure that will help us to achieve our goals,” said McCammon, in a statement. “I am excited that Milly joins us with deep experience of sports marketing and strategic thinking which will no doubt help in taking Excel Esports to new heights,”
Though its League of Legends teams competes from the Riot Games Berlin studio, Excel has leveraged its British homebase by signing BT as its lead partner—the telecommunications company is also a partner of the UK home nations teams in soccer. Excel hosted the Neosurf Cup in January at its home training grounds of Twickenham Stadium; where Leaders also hosts its annual Leaders Week London conference.
