Twitch to pay more than $90 million for Overwatch League broadcast rights

Video platform Twitch will receive the exclusive streaming rights of the Overwatch League, Overwatch’s professional e-sports league, for two years. Twitch will pay at least $90 million for that, Sports Business Daily reports.

Twitch will broadcast not only the regular season of the Overwatch League, but also matches of the league that fall during the off-season. Wednesday night kicks off the competitive season of the Overwatch League at the Blizzard Arena at Burbank Studios in Los Angeles.

Major League Gaming, developer ActivisionBlizzard’s own platform, will still broadcast half of the 2018 season’s games. That means Twitch has exclusive rights to stream six of the twelve matches played each week.

In addition to streaming the matches, the video platform will also establish reward programs and develop new virtual merchandise for Overwatch League viewers. Neither Twitch nor anyone from the Overwatch League would respond to a request for comment from Sports Business Daily.

The $90 million fee for the streaming rights to a professional esports league of a game is quite high in the esports sector, though it is nowhere near as high as the amount awarded to the creator of League of Legends at the end of 2016. Riot Games then signed a similar seven-year deal with BAMTech, a Major League Baseball company. This ultimately yields the developer of League of Legends three hundred million dollars.