14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is planning to make Counter-Strike fans extremely happy as it has reached a deal to exclusively broadcast the ECS Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league.
The tournament is organized by FACEIT, and the deal means that the entire competition will be broadcast live exclusively on YouTube, Forbes reports.
This is quite a change, especially since this type of competition live broadcasts usually took place on Twitch, a platform dedicated to gaming live-streams. There are some benefits to switching over to YouTube, however, like 1080p live streams, as well as live rewind, which are not possible on Twitch.
Earlier this year, YouTube announced another similar deal with ESL for the CS:GO Pro League. As the world eSports grows and grows, such deals become more lucrative.
More eSports to come to YouTube
"YouTube is the largest platform globally when it comes to gaming content, and the level of commitment and resources that YouTube are putting into making the live product more and more prominent. We saw an opportunity, and we've been talking with them for some time, to a point where we decided to make YouTube the new home for ECS in terms of live content and streaming," Michele Attisani, Chief Business Officer and co-founder of FACEIT, told Forbes.
"Although we had a lot of great eSports VoD content, and we have a ton of it, we just never had the tournament part. It is kind of nice from the sales perspective, but it also makes our gaming offering of content more complementary with one another, and it evens it out so that we truly do have anything from mobile games to VR games, to eSports covered on the platform," added Ryan Wyatt, YouTube Global Head of Gaming Content.
Wyatt also mentions that such deals are quite likely to become a habit for YouTube. He did say, however, that they wouldn't just try to grab eSports teams and properties just for the sake of it; they will take into account if it makes sense for the YouTube business as a whole.