Twitch now offers the ability to cheer for the teams of the Overwatch League with Bits. However, the teams themselves are not directly supported by the money.
Blizzard has signed a contract with Twitch for the broadcasting rights of the Overwatch League. This means that for the next two years, Twitch will be the official broadcaster for the eSports event Overwatch League.
Twitch viewers cheer for their teams, but who gets the money?
Since the second phase of the League has started, some of Twitch’s popular features are available specifically for the Overwatch League. Viewers earn League Tokens for Overwatch League skins by watching. They can cheer for special loot using so-called Bits.
This cheering is already being done quite a bit: Viewers have cheered 20 million times in less than a week, contributing approximately €227,000 to the coffers of Twitch and Blizzard. But who gets the money?
Cheering for the Overwatch League: Emotes and Twitch Badges as Rewards
A while ago, Twitch introduced the so-called cheering. Viewers can purchase Bits, which are credited to their accounts and can then be given to a streamer as a tip. In return, rewards such as chat badges are offered.
This feature is now also available for the official Twitch channel of the Overwatch League. Bits can be purchased with a credit card or via PayPal, allowing viewers to cheer for their favorite team through chat commands.
With the commands, individual teams are cheered. There is a leaderboard for which team has been cheered the most with the most Bits thrown into the donation jar. Additionally, donors also receive rewards:
- For 150 Bits, the logo of the cheered team is given as an emote
- For every 100 Bits, one of currently 26 Overwatch League emotes is provided
- With 40,000,000 Bits accumulated in the entire stream, every viewer with a linked Battle.net account receives a Tracer skin in the game. More goals are expected to come
The Bits do not go to the teams!
Twitch advertises that through the special chat commands, individual teams can be cheered on. Each team has its own chat command, and “normal cheering” does not work on the channel.
What has caused some confusion, however: The teams cannot be directly supported through cheering. The Twitch FAQ about Overwatch League cheering states that cheering is part of a larger partnership and supports the players as well as the league as a whole.
Thus, the teams do not receive the full amount of the Bits and cannot be specifically supported with donations. Instead, the partnership between Twitch and Blizzard is supported. There are no figures yet available indicating whether and how much money the teams will receive from this pot.
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