With Overwatch League hitting the homestretch of its inaugural season, commissioner Nate Nanzer reaffirmed expansion plans for season two, telling Mail Esports, which include going deep into Europe as company CEO Bobby Kotick addressed the European Club Association General Assembly with a focus on adding teams in countries such as France, Germany, Spain, the Nordic region, Benelux, and Italy. In addition, a change in scheduling will be in order. “What we’re going to focus on in Season 2 is making sure we’re taking steps to schedule matches, regardless of where they happen, so that they’re at a time that’s better for Europe and Asia,” he said. “The broadcast times have not been great for European fans this year. We’re looking to rectify that to the best of our ability in Season 2.”
Speaking of which, French media company AB Groupe inked a deal to pick up media rights to Overwatch League, where it will carry play on pay-television channel AB1. AB Groupe will provide coverage of the OWL in France and other French-speaking regions as well as in French overseas territories.
A new report from Newzoo shows that gaming content consumption in the first quarter of the year scored 2 billion and 0.4 billion viewing hours respectively by YouTube Gaming and Twitch. Of that time, 11.6% of Twitch’s viewership and 8.2% of YouTube Gaming’s viewership comprised of esports content from events and leagues. Twitch accounted for 82% of the total viewership hours in Q1 overall, while the Top 10 channels on YouTube alone made up 18% of the platform’s viewership in the timeframe.
Maryland’s victory over Illinois to lay claim to the BTN League of Legends Championship sparked viewership growth. The network saw viewership peak at 21,467 viewers for a rise of 163% over last year’s contest. For the entire tournament, over 4.5 million minutes were consumed across seven matches, with 900K unique views.
GINX Esports TV will expand its European turf courtesy of a new deal to launch its 24/7 linear channel on Elisa Viihde, a digital entertainment service in Finland, according to reports. “Finland has been an undeniable forerunner when it comes to European eSports. We are very pleased to partner with Elisa Viihde to bring our channel to this new audience. We look forward to work with Elisa to establish GINX Esports TV as the major destination for Finnish esports lovers, ” said Michiel Bakker, CEO of GINX Esports TV.
Unikrn added tournament platform ChallengeMe.GG to its house, where it will be leveraged to continue to offer both casual & skill-based competitive gaming across tournaments, ladders, leagues and direct challenges with friends. Once integrated into the Unikrn platform, CME will extend the utility of UKG with buy-in tournaments to start as soon as this May and other skill-based, blockchain-powered challenges coming in the near future. The acquisition will also lead to the integration of the Unikrn Wallet into CME’s functionality so users will be able to enter tournaments, make trades and use UKG on the CME platform.
Publishers are staking their claim for E3 announcements, as Ubisoft locked in its annual pre-show briefing for June 11 at 1p PT. Meanwhile, Xbox reserved its own slot, inviting press to attend its briefing on June 10 at 1p PT.
Juniper Research released a new report projecting that loot boxes and skins gambling will generate $50 billion in worldwide consumer spending by 2022, up from less than $30 billion this year. “Juniper strongly recommends regulation for skin trading and gambling, in an attempt to both prevent youth participation and remove malicious actors who run sites which steal skins or short-change users,” the company said about the findings.
Games for Change, the global advocate for the power of games as drivers of social good, announced the first slate of programming for its 15th Annual Games for Change Festival, taking place June 28-30 at Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York City. Featured talks and panels include: Cities Remixing Pokemon GO; MinecraftEDU; BBC Earth: Life in VR Panel; Games and Empathy Panel; and Game to Grow: How eSports Can Shape Student Success. The Games for Change Festival will follow three focused tracks, as it has done in years prior: Games for Learning, Neurogaming & Health, and Civics & Social Issues.
Elsewhere, Riot Games is teaming up with MTV to launch an esports and music festival in Singapore. The event, titled Hyperplay, will be presented by the Singapore Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, and the National Youth Council of Singapore.
Konami’s 10-year run as a partner with the UEFA Champions League will end this year. IGN writes that the org has been a part of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer series since 2008 but, following the Champions League final in Kyiv this May, Konami will no longer hold exclusive rights to feature the competition in-game.
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Darrell Gallagher is joining the Xbox executive leadership team from Activision, where he served as Senior VP and head of development. The hire was announced on Twitter by Matt Booty, head of Microsoft Studios, who noted that he would share more at E3.
