Both ESL and DreamHack, the two esports businesses owned by Swedish parent company Modern Times Group, have just announced a three-year long partnership with Twitch. ESL is the oldest still-operational esports business in the world as well as the world’s largest. DreamHack is likewise a long-running company that has gone through a series iterations, beginning as a LAN party in the late ’90s and eventually morphing into the live event production company and international gaming convention that it is today.
The terms of the companies’ deal with Twitch state that the streaming service will have non-exclusive rights to their English-language broadcasts beginning this year, and exclusive rights to their English broadcasts in 2022.
Events covered in this partnership include ESL’s Pro Tour tournaments for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Starcraft II, and Warcraft III. This includes Intel Extreme Masters (IEM), ESL National Championships, ESL One and ESL Pro League tournaments. Both DreamHack Masters and DreamHack Open are included in the agreement as well. This partnership is now the largest exclusive media deal between a streaming site and an esports tournament production company.
Broadcast rights for ESL have changed hands somewhat frequently. In 2017 the ESL Pro League was broadcast exclusively on YouTube. Then in 2018 it passed on to Facebook, who purchased the rights for both its English and Portuguese-language events. As of last year ESL and DreamHack events were viewable across a variety of streaming platforms.
In addition to broadcast rights, the deal also outlines a plan for Twitch to work on “broadcast integrations” and includes plans for sponsorship. While the wording is vague, a previous deal between Twitch and the Overwatch League included a paid feature that granted subscribers access to personalized match feeds and some in-game cosmetic items. The partnership, however, is limited to certain regions, as it only covers English-language broadcasts, and Modern Times Group has other deals in place with countries in non-English speaking parts of the world.
Roger Lodewick, who is one of the CEOs of DreamHack, spoke highly of the partnership, noting the company’s involvement with the streaming platform since all the way back when it was known as Justin.tv.
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