Activision Blizzard Esports says he is confident it will increase their audience Call of Duty and Overwatch alloys this year, and started launching new products to help with that.
This is the second year of the three-year $ 160 million media rights agreement with Youtube, but this off-season was the first full on which the sides were able to work together to plan the next campaigns, because the original pact was signed shortly before the start of the 2020 campaign.
One of the main features that Activision Blizzard Esports and YouTube Gaming are trying to improve this year is account linking, something the Overwatch League has been doing for years, since its time in Muscular contraction. CDL at the end of last season started testing account linking for the first time as Call of Duty Esports traditionally did not have this feature.
Now, Activision Blizzard Esports is launching the feature for the full CDL season, and bringing it back to OWL, and YouTube Gaming director Ryan Wyatt earlier this week began to reveal the bonus items that will be won this season. This includes amulets for weapons, badges, phone cards and XP tokens. Brandon Snow, commercial director of Activision Blizzard Esports, told SBJ that the rewards will be part of a hierarchical system based on how long the person watches the CDL’s action and that there will also be “sophisticated” items, such as operator skins.
CDL is preparing to announce its list of official sponsors for the 2021 season and is working with YouTube on new sponsorship broadcast integrations that have not yet been announced. Last year sponsors included PlayStation, Fuel for amp setand United States Air Force.
Activision Blizzard Esports is also set to reveal a new fantasy game for OWL that will allow users to enter all tournaments (instead of having to play it all season), along with a new statistics tool in collaboration with IBM and what Snow says will be improved YouTube broadcast production.
After the audience numbers on YouTube last year that for OWL were lower than what the league had gotten last year on Twitch, Snow said it’s “critically important” to increase the audience this year and is confident that both OWL how much CDL will see this growth in 2021. He said that “it’s not just because of the products and commitments we’re launching, but also because of the league’s structures now and that we have a year of remote operation under our belt now – we’ve learned a lot (in 2020). “
Both CDL and OWL saw the audience start to increase at the end of the season; for example, the CDL championship peaked at 331,000 viewers on YouTube, its biggest brand of the season. Still, industry executives would like to see the numbers grow further as team owners try to justify the eight-digit sums spent on franchise fees.
Snow said Activision Blizzard Esports has internal data suggesting that linking accounts and other engagement tools will help increase audience, although he has not released specific projections. Activision Blizzard Esports is also counting on the addition of 100 Thieves and the return of the Optic brand to CDL this year to help increase the interest of this league.
“We will cultivate both,” said Snow. “I feel very good about the show that we are going to perform.”
The regular CDL season starts next month, on February 11th.
YouTube Gaming saw significant growth last year as it started spending more on eSports media rights, but Wyatt also attributed the growth to increases in mobile games from emerging markets and due to the resulting stay-at-home requests. of the coronavirus pandemic.
He said Call of Duty Esports “continues to exceed our expectations” and pointed to linking the account as a “great way to celebrate the relationship between players and publishers”.