YouTube has reportedly struck a deal with Activision Blizzard valued at roughly $160 million. The deal includes exclusive streaming right on YouTube for Blizzard’s Overwatch League, Call of Duty League, and Hearthstone Competitions, according to The Esports Observer.
Activision Blizzard YouTube Deal
Prior to this deal, most Activision esports competitions and leagues were streamed on Twitch and partnered with their platform. This deal with Twitch was estimated to be $90 million over two years for Overwatch alone, so it appears Blizzard’s valuation on this deal has been lowered.
The deal also includes incentive clauses for ad sales and viewership targets. People expect the prize money for these competitive leagues, events, and teams to go up significantly. Organizations are obviously happy about this deal for many reasons.
Activision Blizzard will also be using Google Cloud services as well, making it a big win for Google to have a behemoth like Activision as one of their cloud computing clients.
This new deal raises the question of whether Twitch will remain a dominant force in Esports and as a video game streaming platform. Last year, Microsoft also invested some serious money into poaching some of Twitch’s top talent for their Mixer platform.
