DHL has taken its esports recruitment campaign to China. The logistics company is launching it at IEM Beijing 2026, the Counter-Strike 2 tournament running from 2 to 8 November at the Bloomage Biotech·Biohyalux ECM Arena, and says the program has drawn more than 50,000 job applications worldwide since it began in 2022.
The campaign is run with ESL FACEIT Group (EFG), which organises IEM and has had DHL as its Official Logistics Partner since 2018. It uses esports content, social media and event activations to send fans to DHL career pages, where they can browse and apply for roles in operations, IT, engineering and student programs.
Beijing gives it a large new audience. DHL cites a Statista estimate of nearly 220 million esports users in China, along with EFG’s post-event surveys, which found that more than 75% of its Chinese fans are aged 18 to 29. ESL expects more than 45,000 fans over the week, its biggest standalone IEM in Asia, and TYLOO are the only Chinese team in the 16-team field. Our IEM Beijing 2026 guide has the teams, schedule and prize pool.
From a Dota 2 jobs page to 50,000 applications
The program started small. In May 2022, DHL launched a Dota 2-themed careers page at the ESL One Stockholm Major, listing mostly IT jobs and tied to its role as ESL’s logistics partner, according to DHL’s announcement at the time. One listing let fans apply to be the assistant of DHL’s Dota brand ambassador, SirActionSlacks, with a chance to appear in one of his episodes.
By August 2024, when DHL and EFG extended their partnership for several more years, the recruitment campaigns had produced more than 10,000 applications. The same deal made DHL the logistics partner of the Snapdragon Pro Series mobile league and several DreamHack festivals.
The new figures show how far it has grown since then. DHL now runs the program across 21 hiring hubs in nine countries, using Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and Overwatch. It reports more than one million visits to its esports career platforms, over 400,000 job views and more than 50,000 applications. That is a five-fold rise in applications in a little over two years, and it works out to roughly one application for every eight job views, or one for every 20 visits.
DHL has not said how many of those applicants were hired, or which nine countries the hubs are in. Those are the figures that would show how many roles the program actually fills. DHL presents it as both a hiring channel and a way to build its name with younger fans.
To get fans onto those pages, the campaign leans on entertainment. Its best-known piece is Dispatch, an Office-style comedy series about a fictional DHL esports logistics division, made for Counter-Strike audiences. The campaign’s entry for the 2026 Hashtag Sports Awards lists CS personalities including Machine and SPUNJ in the cast, and the series sits alongside social content and booths at events that feature DHL staff and their jobs.
Why a logistics company wants esports fans
“To keep pace with the future of logistics, we need to reach future talent in innovative and candidate-focused ways,” said Jochen Lampe-Merian, Vice President Employer Branding & Talent Acquisition at DHL Group. “The strong results we’ve seen over the past four years demonstrate the power of meeting people where their passions lie, and expanding the initiative into Asia is a natural next step.”
Arjan Sissing, Senior Vice President Global Brand Marketing at DHL Group, described the audience as future customers as well as future staff. “Esports fans are digital natives whose behaviors increasingly shape the future of commerce, technology and global business,” he said, adding that the move strengthens DHL’s link with fans in “one of our most important markets”.
DHL points to two pieces of research for the commercial case. A June 2026 study by EFG, Hero Esports and Niko Partners surveyed 8,000 Gen Z esports fans in eight markets, China among them, and 74% said branding in esports had affected what they buy. That is a self-reported figure. DHL’s own 2025 E-Commerce Trends Report found that seven in ten online shoppers it surveyed had bought something through social media.
The recruitment work runs alongside DHL’s main job at these events, which is moving the professional esports, broadcast, network, camera, lighting and server equipment a tournament needs. It has done that in Beijing before. When IEM held its first standalone tournament in China in November 2019, DHL shipped the stage equipment and the teams’ gaming chairs, in a season that moved 770 tons of stage gear across seven venues, DHL said at the time. Astralis won that 2019 event, and every edition is on our IEM Beijing page.
The IEM Beijing 2026 group stage runs until 4 November, with the playoffs from 6 November and the grand final on 8 November.
