Kumar Arora is one of Cleveland’s civic champions – a seemingly tireless promoter with a portfolio of local investments as well as working relationships with LeBron James and East Side-raised rapper Machine Gun Kelly.
Arora’s collaboration with the Cleveland Browns on their schedule release video marks a natural progression of his deep-rooted love for the North Coast. Through his creative marketing company, Underdogs, Arora nurtured a relationship between Cleveland’s gridiron institution and Japanese video game giant Capcom. The result is a “Street Fighter”-themed cinematic for the team’s upcoming season.
Hosted by Medina native Matthew Patrick (aka MatPat), the three-minute clip spoofs ’90s gaming commercials, casting Browns players as pixelated combatants. Marvel as Denzel Ward and Quinshon Judkins piledrive and hadouken!! their way to victory over comically caricatured representations of the Steelers, Ravens and Bengals.
Annual NFL schedule release videos are viral goldmines of memes and pop culture parodies, turning a calendar drop into an offseason spectacle. For Arora, the project signifies an ideal marriage between sports and video game fandom.
“There’s a true passion on both sides,” says Arora, who launched his marketing firm with DJ, producer and fellow entrepreneur Eric Vajda. “So, when the Browns were looking at a schedule release video, they wanted to go the gaming route and needed someone who understood that world authentically. ”
Arora’s team cycled through several concepts before landing on “Street Fighter,” an iconic franchise with multiple video games, comic books, animated series and movies under its belt. Gaming is already baked into the firm’s DNA, built on high-profile campaigns for major publishers including Capcom, SEGA and Ubisoft. Harnessing a nostalgic IP – which has another film adaptation arriving in October – ultimately made the most financial and thematic sense, notes Arora.
“The schedule release cycle is its own Super Bowl at this point,” Arora says. “Every franchise is swinging. The ones that break through do it because they found a genuine cultural hook, not just a trend. Street Fighter isn’t a trend, it’s a cornerstone. That’s the difference.”
(Editor’s note: The video was made prior to the Myles Garrett trade)
A perfect concept
Sports have been a constant thread for Underdogs since its inception. In past years, the firm coordinated t-shirt campaigns for the Cleveland Guardians and a promotional soccer ball for the Columbus Crew soccer club. Already holding an official Browns merchandising license, Arora leveraged his previous Capcom relationship to broker the schedule release project.
Explaining the concept to Capcom proved a challenge, though one smoothed by the potential of getting more eyes on its fighting game franchise, he says.
“Japan does not know football, but Capcom was excited to push through,” says Arora. “Street Fighter hits differently because of the visual language. The character select screen, the health bars, the versus screen – it translates immediately to that kind of head-to-head reveal.”
A graduate of Leadership Cleveland’s 2025 class, the serial entrepreneur founded Arora Ventures in 2005 as a hub for his numerous investments and projects. Among his ventures are Ilthy, a clothing brand, Sora, a sushi and Asian fusion restaurant in the Flats, and the FutureLand innovation conference. Arora was also a hand-picked investor on the CNBC reality show “Cleveland Hustles,” created by LeBron James and his business partner Maverick Carter.
By all metrics, the schedule drop is another success, racking up over 4.3 million within a few days of launch. Arora chalks up this enthusiastic reception to the video’s authenticity, ever paramount for a city always having to prove itself, he says.
“Generic doesn’t gut through – genuine does,” Arora says. “(The video) has fun character art and a unique commercial element that feels like it’s for the fans. That’s the No. 1 priority. You’re not watching an infomercial, but something you care about.”
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