Technology

YouTube bets on e-sports leagues to take on Twitch

YouTube announced that three big leagues will stream matches exclusively on its platform

Youtube Fashion

According to The Verge, Amazon’s Twitch, Microsoft’s Mixer, and Google’s YouTube are all in the middle of a e-sports war. Last Friday, YouTube announced that three organizations — the Call of Duty League, the Overwatch League, and competitive Hearthstone — will stream matches exclusively on its platform. Before that, the three leagues, which belong to video game publisher Activision Blizzard, streamed their matches on Twitch.

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Each streamer brings in thousands of live viewers, which helps to increase in millions the views from highlight compilations that are uploaded as VODs to YouTube. As the fight with the other two gaming streaming services gets fierce, this kind of agreement tends to be more and more common.

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According to The Verge, “YouTube is just enacting the same strategy traditional broadcasters have used in fights over rights to mainstream sports for decades”. Despite YouTube’s willingness to become the biggest in the segment, Twitch is still ahead. According to The Verge, at one point on Sunday evening, the League of Legends Championship Series saw 95,000 viewers on YouTube and more than 150,000 on Twitch.

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