After paying a reported $90 million for the rights to stream the first two seasons of the Overwatch League, a new professional esports league that’s mirroring conventional sports with city-based franchises, Twitch announced Week 1 viewership numbers Wednesday and said it’s happy with the results.
Twitch’s $90 million bid for the rights marked the biggest exclusive esports streaming deal since BAMTech paid $300 million to Riot Games in 2016 to stream League of Legends for a seven-year period. Broken down by year, BAMTech paid roughly $43 million compared with Twitch’s $45 million.
Twitch, the Amazon.