Google's $1B purchase of Twitch confirmed (updated) Google has reached a deal to buy game livestreaming firm Twitch for $1 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter.
eSports 'Not A Sport' Says ESPN President. See, I've never been concerned with labels.
If people don't consider video games art, fine. Not sports, fine. In E-Sports, Video Gamers Draw Real Crowds and Big Money. Free Report: Sizing and Profiling eSports’ Popularity. On the heels of Activision’s $1 Million Call of Duty Championship 2014 presented by Xbox and just days away from Wargaming’s 3-day Grand Finals event in Warsaw, Newzoo releases a free report that sheds new light on this global phenomenon.
The report features high-level findings from brand new research across multiple countries profiling 31.4M eSports viewers and participants in the U.S., and another 16.3M in key Western European territories. Additional research in Turkey, Poland, China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam is currently underway. eSports market brief: US accounts for almost half of total viewership. Competitive gaming, or eSports, are a rapidly growing market with viewership increasing almost eight-fold in the last four years, according to our estimates and those of our pals Newzoo.
We estimate the total viewership in the eSports market to have surpassed 70 million in 2013, doubling year-over-year. In the United States, males account for 70% of frequent viewers and participants. And they tend to be young men, married, and have steady jobs. Don't Tell the Kids: Computer Games Can Make You Rich. Riot Season 4 LCS contracts stipulate players cannot stream Dota 2, Blizzard games. Update, 2:45PM PST: Director of Esports at Riot Games Whalen 'RiotMagus' Rozelle confirmed in a Reddit thread that the streaming and advertisement restrictions we reported on are, in fact, in place.
His comment can be found below: We say this all the time: we want League of Legends to be a legitimate sport. There are some cool things that come from that (salaried professional athletes, legitimate revenue streams, visas, Staples Center), but there’s also a lot of structural work that needs to be done to ensure a true professional setting.We recognize there may be some differences of opinion in the perception of pro players’ streams. In the past, pro gamers only had to worry about their personal brands when streaming and, at most, may have had to worry about not using the wrong brand of keyboard to keep their sponsor happy. Over 2 million tune in to watch IEM Cologne 2013. The Intel Extreme Masters Season 8 event in Cologne marked the first international League of Legends competition since the end of the Season 3 World Championships. 2,122,820 viewers tuned in to watch American teams Cloud 9 and Counter Logic Gaming square off against European powerhouses Fnatic and Gambit Gaming in highly anticipated cross-Atlantic games.
The official Twitch English stream hit a peak of just under 300,000 viewers on finals day, with the United States, Germany, Poland, France, and Sweden as the five countries who tuned in the most. The Electronic Sports League has provided onGamers a breakdown of the source of viewership for IEM Cologne including Twitch and Asian steams, total unique viewers, total views/sessions, and peak concurrent viewers. ESL aims to bring transparency to live streaming statistics that are released by leagues and developers after large scale events. Videogame Champ, Past His Prime At 28, Grooms Next Screen Jocks. Top 100 Highest Overall Earnings. The Smash Brothers: Episode 1 - Show Me Your Moves.
PC Gaming leading the way with eSports and Video Streaming. On Saturday more than 13,000 spectators descended on the Staples Centre in LA to watch the League of Legends World Championship Final Event.
Gaming as a professional sport has been around for a long time and has enjoyed mass popularity in Asia for years. Now the phenomenon is breaking out of niche status, attracting millions of game enthusiast followers in the West. Sudden mass uptake over the past year has made game video streams the fastest growing content on the web, including YouTube and specialized destinations like Twitch, who raised $20 million last week to support its explosive growth and global expansion.
Gaming on PC more popular than consoles While Western press focus their attention on the next-gen console battle between Xbox One and PlayStation 4, PC Gaming is leading the industry in eSports and video content as well as in number of gamers on a global scale with around 900 million players. Facts and figures on PC Gaming, eSports and game video content. Field of streams: how Twitch made video games a spectator sport. When 'Doom' and 'Quake' Beget eSports. The League of Legends World Championship circuit is in full swing, leading up to the Finals on October 4 at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
That’s right, the next elite players of Riot’s super popular MOBA will hoist a trophy on the same stage where venerable L.A. sports teams the Lakers and the Kings have done it. The League of Legends competition is arguably doing more to elevate the profile of eSports than any other current tournament. It has most certainly surpassed popular tournaments for stalwarts such as Starcraft and Counterstrike in the amount of buzz it's generating. For the upcoming championship, Riot even snagged a major non-endemic brand as sponsor in American Express, whose marketing executive has very candidly said that he sees the potential for esports to rival real sports when it comes to marketing and audience reach. How Marcus ‘djWheat’ Graham became one of the voices of e-sports. If you grew up watching football, you likely know where most of the color-commentary broadcasters came from.
Think of John Madden. Just about everyone knows that he started as a player in the National Football League. He later went on to coach the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl before his long career commentating on games. Nissan Revs Into eSports. Editor's note: Veteran entertainment journalist John Gaudiosi is now a regular contributor to [a]list daily.
By John Gaudiosi This past weekend saw record livestreams on Twitch thanks to Valve Software’s The International 3 and its $2.8 million prize pool and Blizzard Entertainment’s World Championship Series (WCS) Season 2 Regional Finals. Twitch reported 4.5 million unique viewers in one day on August 11.
Over 550 million minutes were watched this past weekend with an average viewing time of over two hours per viewer. Riot Games League Of Legends Officially Becomes Most Played PC Game In The World. How video games are becoming the next great North American spectator sport. The drinking man's guide to watching StarCraft. MLG Anaheim: Details. Premier Esports Coverage.