It’s official: Activision has indeed purchased Major League Gaming, as was rumoured over the weekend. The most interesting part? They want to take esports to television.
Speaking to the New York Times as part of the embargoed official announcement, Activision boss Bobby Kotick was as blunt as ever, saying he wants to take competitive gaming to a traditional television channel. “I have a simple vision for this,” he told the paper. “I want to build the ESPN of video games.”
Easier said than done, of course — casual viewers might find a game of basketball more accessible than, say, a game of Dota 2 — but it’s an admirable goal nonetheless.
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3 responses to “Activision Wants To Start Their Own TV Channel For Esports”
if they make it into a streaming service like NetFlix or the WWE Network, id definately sign up for it if they could work out a deal With StarLeague and GSL to show matches without having to go through Twitch
They should be trying to work something out with twitch/netflix/amazon/youtube for live streaming and vods. Their target demographic is much, much more likely cable cutters.
Sports are cables last bastion but i reckon it’s just a matter of time before they migrate to the big streaming sites as well. As the streaming sites get larger they’ll have more purchasing power.
I guess there are heaps of things to figure out in regards to what Games are played, existing deals in place like ESL and CS Go, TV deals already done like the Turner League.
That’s about as sensible as broadcasting the Over 60s World Lawn bowls championship on twitch. Broadcast TV is dying, cable/satellite TV is losing subscribers to steaming services like Netflix. This whole thing smells like a cable company attempting to keep their outdated business model alive. People won’t sign up to their service to watch it, they’ll just watch something else and their captive league will wither and die.