League of Legends ESPN+ Deal Not as Beneficial as BAMTech Deal
By Nicholas Barth ·
The recently announced ESPN+ broadcast deal that the sports media giant and Riot Games have agreed on for the NA LCS is a huge step for esports, but not as big of a one that the BAMTech deal offered.
One of the biggest pieces of news making its way around the esports industry this past week was the broadcast deal that ESPN and Riot Games announced for the North American League Championship Series (NA LCS) on May 25th. The deal will see NA LCS matches broadcasted on the newly launched ESPN+ streaming service beginning with the 2018 Summer Split.
While seeing League of Legends matches broadcasted on an ESPN streaming service is a major step forward for the esports industry and professional League of Legends specifically, the ESPN+ deal does not offer the same potential benefits that the BAMTech broadcast deal that Riot Games had originally agreed to consisted of. This has caused many well known members of the League of Legends community to speak out against the deal, such as esports reporter Travis Gafford.
The massive BAMTech deal that Riot Games had signed up for back in 2016 was prepared to bring the MOBA giant of League of Legends $300,000,000 over a seven year period. Riot Games would have seen a huge payday that would have brought massive financial sustainability to the professional League of Legends scene. Riot Games would also have attained exclusive broadcast rights to all of its published League of Legends content, which is something that is extremely rare in the world of traditional professional sports broadcasting and unheard of in the esports industry. League of Legends content would have had its own exclusive home, such as professional wrestling on the WWE Network, and would not have to rely on third party platforms, such as Twitch and YouTube.
However, with the Walt Disney Company purchasing a 42% stake in BAMTech back in August, Disney, the parent company of ESPN, became a 75% shareholder in BAMTech. This resulted in the death of the original BAMTech deal that promised a unprecedented level of exclusivity for professional League of Legends broadcasting and replaced it with the NA LCS becoming a featured product of the ESPN+ streaming service. Now neither Riot Games or ESPN have exclusive broadcast rights to League of Legends, as matches can and will still be broadcasted on other platforms, such as Twitch.
ESPN+ will be one of the platforms that fans can watch to see if Team Liquid can defend their 2018 NA LCS Spring Split title this summer.
(Source: Red Bull)
With the support of a media giant like ESPN behind it, the new ESPN+ deal for Riot Games will most likely be a very profitable decision by the two parties and has the potential to introduce the world of esports to a completely new audience. Unfortunately, it does not offer the same control or benefits that the proposed exclusivity of the original BAMTech deal brought to the table and looks to be a missed opportunity for the ecosystem of professional League of Legends and the esports industry as a whole.
(cover photo courtesy of Republic of Gamers)