Latin America is the fastest-growing gaming market in the world by user count, led by Brazil and Mexico. Ten campaigns that defined the region's gaming PR — with real publishers, real numbers, and real outcomes.
Garena Free Fire — the Brazil dominance play
Free Fire, developed by Singapore's Garena, made Brazil its largest single market outside Southeast Asia through the Free Fire Liga Brasileira (LBFF), broadcast on SporTV and streamed on YouTube. The 2021 Free Fire World Series in Singapore drew a peak concurrent viewership of 5.4 million — the largest esports audience ever recorded at the time — with Brazilian squads Team Vivo Keyd and LOUD driving the peak. Garena's PR posture in Brazil is inseparable from its influencer economy: creators like Cerol and Nobru move product on a scale unmatched in Western gaming.
Riot Games LATAM — VALORANT and the LLA
Riot Games' Latin American operation, headquartered in Mexico City, runs both the Liga Latinoamérica (LLA) for League of Legends and the VALORANT Champions Tour Americas. The 2023 VCT Americas launch consolidated North and Latin American VALORANT into one league — a move Riot briefed to Dot Esports, The Score Esports, and ESPN Deportes as a business story about competitive equity. Team Heretics, LOUD, and Leviatán became the household squads out of the format.
EA Sports FC in Brazil — the post-FIFA transition
EA Sports' rebrand from FIFA to EA Sports FC in 2023 was executed with particular care in Brazil, where the FIFA franchise had held cultural weight since the 1990s. EA partnered with Neymar Jr. as a launch endorser, with Brazilian CBF (Confederação Brasileira de Futebol) licensing intact, and ran launch content across Globo, SporTV, and TikTok Brasil. The transition PR successfully moved brand equity from a name (FIFA) to a publisher (EA Sports) — one of the harder brand transfers ever attempted at consumer scale.
Coca-Cola x FIFA World Cup 2022 — the LATAM AR activation
For the 2022 Qatar World Cup, Coca-Cola LATAM ran an augmented-reality campaign across Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil that let consumers unlock virtual stadium content by scanning Coke bottles through the Coca-Cola app. The activation, produced by Ogilvy Mexico with WPP, generated over 20 million AR interactions across the three markets during the tournament — one of the largest AR consumer activations ever run in the region.
Riot Games x Arcane — the Netflix crossover
The 2021 launch of Netflix's Arcane, produced with Riot Games, generated the largest gaming-adjacent PR moment in Latin America of the decade. Netflix LATAM ran the launch across São Paulo and Mexico City with in-cinema screening events, Twitch co-streams with Brazilian and Mexican League of Legends casters, and a merchandise rollout through Riot's regional store. Arcane was Netflix's #1 program in 52 countries and drove a documented spike in League of Legends registrations across LATAM.
Rappi Gaming — the delivery-app pivot
Colombian super-app Rappi launched a dedicated Rappi Games vertical in 2022 across its Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil operations, partnering with mobile publishers to offer in-app game trials and rewards. The PR play framed Rappi not as a delivery company but as a lifestyle platform — a narrative Rappi executed through Bloomberg Línea, Contxto, and Forbes México coverage.
Mercado Libre x gaming — the LATAM e-commerce vertical
Mercado Libre's dedicated Gaming category, launched with a major push in 2021, made the Argentine e-commerce giant the primary sales channel for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo hardware across the region. Mercado Libre partnered with publishers on launch-day promotions for major titles (God of War Ragnarök, Elden Ring), delivering a co-marketing model that positioned the platform as a gaming retailer alongside its horizontal marketplace.
Wildlife Studios — the Brazilian mobile unicorn
São Paulo–based Wildlife Studios, publisher of Zooba and Sniper 3D Assassin, became Latin America's first gaming unicorn in 2020 at a $1.3 billion valuation. Wildlife's PR strategy positioned it as a Brazilian tech success story — CEO Victor Lazarte briefed Reuters, TechCrunch, and Valor Econômico with equal emphasis on Brazilian engineering talent and global commercial reach. The narrative arc has since defined how Latin American gaming startups pitch international press.
Netflix Squid Game — the LATAM ARG activation
For Squid Game Season 2 in 2024, Netflix LATAM ran a real-world alternate-reality game across São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City featuring the show's iconic Ddakji card game with pop-up activations, prize competitions, and streamer partnerships with Alanzoka (Brazil) and Auronplay-affiliated Spanish-language streamers. The activation drove significant Twitch and YouTube co-stream engagement across the region.
LOUD — the operator-media hybrid
Brazilian esports organization LOUD, based in São Paulo, has become one of the most valuable non-North-American esports brands by treating itself as a media property first and a competitive team second. LOUD's YouTube channel exceeds most Brazilian TV networks in gaming-vertical engagement, its sponsor roster (Bud, Alienware, Red Bull) rivals top NBA teams, and its 2022 Free Fire World Championship win drove a documented spike in Brazilian esports sponsorship pricing across the market.
What the ten campaigns share
Named publishers with genuine LATAM operations, not headquarters-driven creative pushed south. Portuguese and Spanish language production as the default, not the adaptation. Editorial-first distribution through Globo, TUDN, and Dot Esports as much as through TikTok and Twitch. And an emerging AI Citation Share reality: every publisher named here now appears consistently when ChatGPT and Perplexity are asked in Portuguese or Spanish about the top gaming brands in the region. That is the outcome the PR now optimizes for — being the answer when the AI is asked in the local language.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
