Irvine-based Toshiba America Business Solutions Inc. has been named the official document solutions provider for the Anaheim Ducks.
The cross-town deal is for three years; both parties declined to discuss financial details.
Under the new agreement, finalized a few months ago, Toshiba America Business will supply the hockey club with 17 highly customizable multifunctional printers for the Honda Center, team offices across the street, and its training facility in Anaheim.
The deal marks the first partnership between the companies since the late 2000s, though Toshiba America Business has been a suite holder near center ice at the Honda Center for years.
The local unit has targeted sports franchises with digital signage and printer solutions and venues for years and has a similar arrangement with the Detroit Tigers, Buffalo Bills and Carolina Panthers. It was the “founding partner” of the Staples Center and T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and is the official digital signage and managed services provider for LA Live.
“It’s nice for us to align with a team and arenas as a way to show our support for the communities,” said Toshiba America Business Chief Marketing Executive Bill Melo.
Toshiba America Business, which employs 310 locally, is among Orange County’s largest companies, with about $1 billion in annual sales, and employs over 2,800 in more than 100 U.S. offices and a toner plant in South Dakota. The unit has long served small and midsize businesses with its suite of scanners, printers, copiers and digital displays, among other products. It has about 165,000 U.S. customers.
It’s a unit of Tokyo-based Toshiba Tec, which is publicly traded on Japan’s Nikkei exchange and posts annual sales of more than $5 billion. Financially troubled Toshiba Corp. is its primary stockholder, with just over a 50% majority stake.
The Ducks enter the 2017-18 season with high hopes again after coming within two wins last year of returning to the Stanley Cup Championship.
Bigger Esports Stage
Blizzard Entertainment Inc.’s push into esports just got a lot bigger.
The Irvine-based video game publisher will open Blizzard Arena Los Angeles next month, a live-event venue for pro players and esports fans alike at the famed Burbank Studios.
The arena, outfitted with multiple sound stages, control rooms, and practice facilities, will host events year-round and feature a retail store that rotates Blizzard inventory based on the competition.
The first event, scheduled for Oct. 7 to 8, will crown the top Overwatch teams in the U.S. and Europe.
The Hearthstone Championship Tour’s Summer Championship will be held the following week with a $250,000 purse on the line and an invite to the Hearthstone World Championship early next year.
Collectible card game “Hearthstone” has racked up more than 70 million players since its March 2014 U.S. launch, which could claim the title as the most actively played Blizzard game in the company’s 23-year history.
The first-person shooter “Overwatch” has become a $1 billion business since its May 2016 release and the foundation of the upcoming Overwatch League, which has attracted franchises and well-known sports owners in Boston, London, L.A., Miami-Orlando, New York, San Francisco, Seoul and Shanghai.
New Deal
Western Digital Corp., which has a major operation in Irvine, has led a $16 million funding round for an Israeli startup that specializes in flash storage.
The strategic investment in Elastifile is Western Digital’s second deal in the storage segment in less than two weeks.
The company, which relocated its headquarters from Irvine to San Jose this year, agreed to acquire Tegile Systems in Newark late last month on undisclosed terms.
Tegile provides flash and “persistent-memory” storage for enterprise data center customers, a segment Western Digital has targeted since its $4.8 billion buy of HGST in 2012.
Elastifile sells a distributed file system that melds flash and cloud storage.
The investments come as Western Digital aims to attract Apple for a joint acquisition of Toshiba’s flash storage business amid a growing bidding war that also includes SK Hynix Inc. in South Korea; the Japanese operation of Bain Capital; the state-run Innovation Network Corp. in Japan; and Development Bank of Japan Inc.
Western Digital and Toshiba have been strategic partners for more than a decade. A majority of Western Digital’s NAND-flash memory is primarily supplied through its business ventures with Toshiba, according to its annual report. Toshiba, which has several U.S. units based in Irvine, including Toshiba America Business, is seeking about $18 billion for the business to stem a potential wind down of its entire operation due to its bankrupt U.S. nuclear business.
