CASE HISTORY AND SAMPLE CLIPS
Bohle Helped Make CPL the Best Known Pro Gamer League
The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) a professional sports tournament organization specializing in computer and console video game competitions, was founded in 1997 by Dallas gaming entrepreneur Angel Munoz.
CPL pioneered video game tournaments, which have now been held in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, Australia and Asia. The CPL has distributed more than US$3 million in cash prizes.
The Bohle Company was engaged to promote U.S. tournaments, which became the core of the program, proved a league could sustain fulltime professional game players and allowed CPL to obtain outside investment.
Objectives:
• Increase awareness of the Cyber Professional League, an association of professional PC game players, then in its infancy
• Generate more participants, attendees and sponsors for CPL tournaments, leading to company acquisition or substantial investment
Strategies:
• Promote pro playing as a sport
• Identify a few top pro players and past tournament winners willing to do interviews on behalf of the CPL
• Include players with interesting human interest (i.e. top female players, etc.)
• Promote the growth of the game industry and the increasing size of the purse for CPL tournament champions
Activities:
• Stream of press releases promoting regional tournaments, leading up to the first big prize money national competition
• Exclusive pitches to key sports reporters
• Staffing on the national event
Results:
• Terrific pre, during and event publicity for three regional tournaments in the game media and daily newspapers near the events
• Four page article in Business Week on a CPL pro
• A six page article in Entertainment Weekly on the top female game players
• AP Story
• Front page Los Angeles Times story
• Coverage in numerous daily newspapers
