Google has signed a deal with Activision Blizzard for streaming some of the hottest games. Activision Blizzard is well known for its Call of Duty franchise and its earlier famous gaming title Guitar Hero. But its two new gaming titles Overwatch and Hearthstone have helped the company to gain even more popularity across the gaming community.
Overwatch, Call of Duty and Hearthstone count among the top streamed games on Twitch, the most adored game streaming platform around the world. But the new acquisition might help the YouTube gaming platform big time.
With the new deal, the upcoming season of the League would be exclusively streamed on YouTube.
Google and Activision Blizzard, in a joint press release, said the streaming deal would go on for many years to come.
Activision Blizzard has stated it is moving to Google Cloud only because of its "its highly reliable global footprint, advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and commitment to open source, creating a platform for building future gaming innovations". Activision Blizzard is hopeful about the new deal. The company has noted that switching platform would help the players to experience a superior streaming service while playing high-fidelity games with lowest low-latency and packet loss.
The new Leagues
Starting this week, YouTube would begin streaming the official live broadcast of Overwatch Season 3. The famous Call of Duty too would get a new league going forward, with season one starting on January 25.
The all-new Call of Duty season would feature 12 teams competing against each other in Minnesota.
The Overwatch league 2020 live streaming would follow on February 8.
The money
The deal amount has not yet been disclosed by either Activision Blizzard or Google. Going by its previous league deals, it is sure to run into millions of dollars. In the last two years, 2018 and 2019, Twitch reportedly spent around $90 million.
YouTube's increasing popularity
The Overwatch League counts among the top streaming games as of now. The game is played by around 200 million people. As much as 50 billion hours of content is produced every year. The famous Call of Duty league too is expected to taste the same success in its very first year.
YouTube already has an active user count of 200 million per day, which is much higher than Twitch's 15 million. Google will gain more gaming buffs through the new streaming deal.
