Amazon.com, Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) bought the video-game streaming service Twitch for $1 billion and it was announced on Wednesday that a new eSports league backed by both companies is about to be premiered.
It is to be called eSports Championship Series and it displays a pretty important step into the inclusion of eSports into mainstream internet media. It will be the first professional eSports league that allows teams to share ownership, just like most professional sports leagues.
Features of the ECS
The league is set to start on Wednesday, April 6, at 12:00pm Eastern Time, with traditional multiplayer PC shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with a roster comprised of 10 teams from Europe and 10 from the United States. The championship has a prize of $3.5 million and it can only be seen from Twitch.tv channel Faceit. The league will also feature development leagues so newer players and teams can train and face each other. It seems that this is one of the largest steps into developing eSports as a popular way of entertainment.
Although Amazon is the heaviest contender among the companies in the field, Faceit will have to compete against Blizzard’s Major League Gaming and against the ELeague, two major competitors in the eSports championship scene. But Twitch stands as the largest video-game streaming platform thanks to the tools it offers to streamers and to its community-driven environment, as it currently has over 100 million viewers. On the other hand, it is estimated that a fifth of every hour watched on Twitch is due to eSports.
Twitch managed to raise $15 million in funding and it is to pay for the accommodations of the players, as well as parties, travel expenses and more. It has been said that Faceit is aiming to put a great deal of effort in building the best competitive scenario, as the league takes into account the availability of the teams and the codes of conduct during each game.
Source: Tech Insider