Activation confidence in the growth of UIL, CDL audience – the observer of Esports

Activision Blizzard Esports says he is confident it will magnify for both viewers Call of Duty and Ear Watch leagues this year, and it started launching new products to help it.

This is the second year of the three-year, $ 160 million dollar media rights deal Youtube, but this off-season was the first complete one where the parties could work together to plan for the upcoming campaigns, as the original treaty was struck just before the 2020 campaign began.

One of the key features that Activision Blizzard Esports and YouTube Gaming want to improve this year is account linking, something Overwatch League has been doing for years since its inception. Twitch. At the end of last season, CDL started testing account linkage for the first time as Call of Duty esports has traditionally not had such a feature.

Now Activision Blizzard Esports is launching the full season feature for CDL and bringing it back for OWL, and YouTube Gaming CEO Ryan Wyatt began announcing the bonus items earned this season earlier this week. These include weapon spells, emblems, calling cards and XP tokens. Brandon Snow, chief operating officer of Activision Blizzard Esports, told SBJ that the rewards would be part of a differentiated system, based on how much time CDL actions watch and that there would also be ‘high’ items such as surgery sheets.

CDL is preparing to announce its offer of official sponsors for the 2021 season and is working with YouTube on new sponsorship broadcasts yet to be announced. Sponsors last year included Play station, Mountain Dew Amp Game Fuel, en US Air Force.

Activision Blizzard Esports will also unveil a new fantasy selection game for OWL that will allow users to enter each tournament (instead of playing together throughout the season), along with a new stats tool in collaboration with IBM and what Snow says will improve the enhanced broadcast production from YouTube.

After the viewing figures on YouTube for OWL last year were lower than what the league received on Twitch the previous year, Snow said it was ‘critically important’ to increase viewership year and that he was confident that both OWL and CDL would see that growth in 2021. He said that it is “not only because of the products and commitments we are launching, but also the structures of the league now and that we now have a year of remote control under control – we have learned a lot (in 2020). ”

Both CDL and OWL saw the viewer start to increase towards the end of the season; the CDL Championship, for example, reaches a peak of 331K viewers on YouTube, the highest point of the season. Still, management is keen to see the numbers grow as team owners try to justify the eight-figure amounts spent on franchise fees.

Snow said Activision Blizzard Esports has internal data suggesting that linking accounts and other aids to spectators will help the audience grow, although he did not release specific projections. Activision Blizzard Esports is also counting on the addition of 100 thieves and the return of the Optic brand in CDL to grow this interest in the league.

“We’re both going to grow,” Snow said. “I feel very good about the show we are going to present.”

The CDL regular season begins next month on February 11th.

YouTube Gaming grew significantly last year when it started spending more on media rights on esports, but Wyatt also attributed the growth to the increase in mobile games, from emerging markets and due to orders at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.

He said Call of Duty Esports ‘still exceeds our expectations’, pointing to the account link as a ‘great way to celebrate the relationship between players and publishers.’

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