Overwatch and Call of Duty Leagues Streaming Exclusively on YouTube
As part of a multi-year partnership, Overwatch and Call of Duty Leagues streaming exclusively on YouTube. With the partnership, Google Cloud will be Activision Blizzard’s preferred cloud provider. Furthermore, the video-sharing app will be its exclusive source for its live games.
Overwatch and Call of Duty Leagues Streaming — a Sign of YouTube’s Expansion into Gaming
Amazon’s Twitch remains the dominant source for live streaming. However, it is slowly losing its ground. In 2019, its market share went down to 61% from 67.1% in 2018. Although it continues its dominance, it is slowly slipping away.
Even if YouTube Gaming is at -27% market share, it may still topple Twitch’s dominance. It is just a matter of time when we see Twitch at the bottom. Its rivals are making aggressive moves.
One of the reasons gamers are moving to YouTube from Twitch is that of the available feature. They enjoy YouTube streaming because they can transform their content into YouTube videos. On Twitch, they have to do it using the complicated VODs.
The announcement of the new partnership was made before the beginning of the Call of Duty League season in Minnesota. The season has 12 teams competing and it could impact the gaming world.
In the past few years, Google Cloud is working with Activision Blizzard for its analytics capabilities. The company is excited to expand its partnership by streaming its sports games on YouTube.
In a statement:
“We’re excited to partner with Google to drive the next generation of gaming innovation for the industry. Google Cloud’s best-in-class infrastructure gives us the confidence to deliver great entertainment to our fans around the world.”
Even though YouTube is a huge video site, it has struggled to compete with Twitch and other similar sites. But this might change because of this partnership.
In the last few months, YT is making high-profile moves. One of them is the partnership with Jack Dunlop, a Twitch streamer with over 9,000 live viewers per stream.
Twitch Failed to Meet Revenue Goals
YouTube Gaming has full resources. Thanks to its profitable sites. Twitch, on the other hand, failed to achieve its revenue goals. It only landed $300 million. It was below its $600 million goal set.
Even if Amazon has a massive revenue, Twitch will not be close to making a tiny fraction of Google’s $16 to $25 billion in revenue each year. YouTube is making better monetization through ads. In that case, it can easily use the cash it needs to improve its live-streaming features. As a result, it could easily make big deals with various companies.
Twitch is only bringing $300 million in annual revenue. And it is a problem for Amazon that is spending $90 million just to retain the rights for Call of Duty and Overwatch.
YouTube is giving its live stream features more funding to compete. It has a huge advantage of being the market leader.
Although Twitch is still holding its position, Amazon might want to supercharge its budget to compete with YouTube and other rivals, like Facebook. Furthermore, Amazon should be paying creators and Twitch more on ad revenue.
Overwatch and Call of Duty Leagues streaming partnership is just one of the many moves of Google. We can expect more deals like this in the future.
