The streaming service Twitch is now losing another one of its biggest channels after its star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins: the Overwatch League. Activision Blizzard has struck an exclusive deal with YouTube: The eSports of Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Hearthstone will no longer be available on Twitch, but on YouTube.
This is the situation so far: The Overwatch League is a major eSports initiative from Activision Blizzard, involving large sums for Activision Blizzard and its investors.
In 2018, Activision Blizzard sold the broadcast rights of the Overwatch League exclusively to Twitch in a 2-year deal. It was said that the rights cost 90 million $. However, this deal has now expired.
Overwatch was extremely important for Twitch
This many people watched the Overwatch League on Twitch: The Overwatch League was one of the top 5 channels on Twitch over the last 2 years:
- In 2018, 66 million hours of Overwatch League were watched on Twitch. This placed the Overwatch League at 4th among the most-watched channels, only behind Ninja, RiotGames (LoL), and shroud.
- In 2019, even 80 million hours of Overwatch League were watched on Twitch. That was 3rd place behind Riot Games and Tfue.
3 of the biggest channels from 2018 are no longer visible on Twitch in 2020, but either on YouTube (Overwatch) or on Mixer (Ninja, Shroud).
Google and Activision Blizzard team up
This is the new situation: Activision Blizzard and Google, which owns YouTube, are entering into a far-reaching partnership:
- Google Cloud will be the “preferred partner” for hosting games from Activision Blizzard.
- YouTube will broadcast the eSports from Activision Blizzard: This includes the Overwatch League, the new Call of Duty League, the eSports of Hearthstone, and other games.
This is how it is viewed: Observers like Doron Nir from StreamElements believe that YouTube Gaming is managing to grab 3 significant eSports leagues. This is a substantial step to build its own offering and show that it wants to take the lead in live streaming and is truly making a move.
According to Forbes, YouTube has now snatched something away from Twitch. This shows that YouTube is more important for Google than Twitch is for the Amazon corporation. Therefore, YouTube is willing to make such large investments.
YouTube will be better “monetized.” Twitch, on the other hand, remains currently below revenue expectations and is gradually losing market share in streaming.
This is what is behind it: In August 2019, people believed Mixer would be the big rival of Twitch, attacking and snatching top content creators from Twitch with exclusive and lucrative deals. However, in recent months, it has increasingly appeared that YouTube is actively entering the live streaming market.
YouTube already has a massive user base. Many popular gaming influencers are already on the platform with their “video-on-demand” formats . Apparently, YouTube wants to expand gaming and live streaming in 2020 and is ready to invest for it.
YouTube has recently tied up some big Fortnite streamers with exclusive contracts and made them commit to streaming regularly on YouTube.
Twitch has signed some important streamers under exclusive contracts, but currently, there is not a month that goes by without top streamers announcing they are leaving Twitch. Even the German Twitch star MontanaBlack is publicly contemplating a switch if Twitch does not make him a strong offer.
There has been quite a stir around the Overwatch League in recent months. Therefore, it is possible that Twitch has deliberately chosen not to invest as much money in the league as in 2018:
