Activision Blizzard is making a major shift from Amazon to Google with a new partnership that includes esports media rights on YouTube, and teams are describing the deal as a win for their coffers. With just minutes to spare before the start of the revamped Call of Duty League's '20 season on Friday, Activision announced it had signed with Google to sell media rights for Overwatch League and CDL, among other properties, and it also will buy Google Cloud services in a partnership that has money going both ways. Financial terms were not released, but sources are describing the value of the multiyear deal as well into the nine figures when combining the money Google will pay Activision for media rights and the money Activision will send back to Google for cloud infrastructure services. On top of guaranteed rights fees, a source said the deal also includes bonuses should the properties hit certain viewership and ad sales targets. The previous streaming deal with Twitch was worth a reported $45M annually over two years, and one source familiar with the terms of the deal said this will represent a "much better" arrangement for teams financially than the prior one. Teams had been hoping for a deal that not only improved financial terms, but also left them on a platform that was at least as well-known and widely accessed as Twitch, something that most felt was accomplished by aligning with YouTube. Teams are relying on appreciating media rights to help them turn a profit and justify their eight-figure franchise fees.
AS SEEN ON TV? Activision still has not yet announced the future of OWL's linear TV plans, after its deal with ESPN/ABC expired following this past season. The CDL has not traditionally been on linear TV, in part because there are more graphically violent depictions in Call of Duty than in Overwatch, and there was no signal from Activision that this has changed. The CDL kicked off the '20 season this past weekend in Minneapolis, and viewership on YouTube on the first day of action Friday topped out at around 85,000 viewers. While Google may profit from the overall venture by earning more on cloud fees than it will pay out in media rights fees, the move is still a major statement about YouTube's plans to increase its foothold in the gaming space. Activision Blizzard Esports CEO Pete Vlastelica said in a statement, "It's our mission to deliver high-quality competitive entertainment that our fans can follow globally, live or on-demand, and to celebrate our players as the superstars that they are. This partnership will help us deliver on that promise at new levels, by combining our passionate communities of fans and players with YouTube's powerful content platform and exciting history of supporting next-generation entertainment."
LOOKING AHEAD: For Twitch, the Activision loss will likely ramp up industry speculation about whether it is losing its predominance in gaming streaming, as several notable streamers, led by Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, also defected from the platform within the last year for deals on other platforms. But Twitch has said publicly that it is expanding its platform beyond gaming, and some industry experts had predicted for months that it would not pay an increased fee for OWL media rights this cycle.
