Organising sporting events is a lot of costs. Often times it is not covered by merchandising and ticket sales. One of the biggest sources of revenues is via selling broadcasting rights to the highest bidder. In esports, broadcasting has always been associated with twitch. Last year we saw ESL Move towards Youtube in an attempt to diversify their movement.
However this year we saw ESL sell the exclusive broadcasting rights to Facebook, a move which has received a huge backlash from the community. The ESL One Genting tournament saw record low viewership numbers and definitely unbecoming of a tournament which is supposed to be hyped.
I’m not happy about it, but I feel obligated to point out that broadcast rights are THE largest source of economic rents for nearly EVERY professional or major competitive sports league around the world. Esports is not different just “because we’re esports”.
— Nahaz (@NahazDota) January 23, 2018