BAMTech Plans to Launch A League of Legends Streaming Agreement

By Jeroah Sabado - 17 Dec '16 04:40AM

Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is a genre of strategic video games in which a player controls a single character in one of two teams.

League of Legends is a competitive online game that blends the speed and intensity of a real-time strategy (RTS) with role-playing game (RPG) elements and considered a giant in eSports, with fast-paced tournaments watched by tens of millions of players and fans around the world. Riot Games, a subsidiary of a Chinese tech giant Tencent, has signed a streaming deal with a Major League Baseball's streaming tech company.

BAMTech, a company owned by Major League Baseball and Disney, has entered an agreement and signed a $300 million contract with Riot Games for the exclusive rights to monetize, improve and deliver 'League of Legends' across all continents.

The deal was reported last Friday by the Wall Street Journal. Under the contract, starting in 2017, Riot Games is expected to work with BAMTech. They are planning to develop new eSports properties for League of Legends. The video game publisher said that it is to "grow revenue in our sport through various means, including sponsorship and advertising".

Riot Games described the deal as a "first-of-its-kind long-term commercialization partnership" and is meant for bringing more revenue into the scene. The game's popularity has led Riot Games (which has no other video games) to bringing in over $1 billion in total revenues per year.

Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) has become popular among younger audiences and according to Riot Games, its 15-day League of Legends championship tour last 2016 in North America attracted 43 million unique viewers. The viewers watched a total of 370 million hours of live video.

You can follow up the calendar of the next League of Legends matches here.

For BAMTech, the Riot Games pact is the third exclusive, long-term streaming-rights acquisition in just over a year. Disney, the parent company of ESPN, owns 33 percent of BAMTech.