This week Facebook made a major push into live sports with a deal including the MLB. This deal gave Facebook the rights to stream a weekly MLB game for free online without blackouts.
Now Facebook has a deal starting in June to stream eSports games including Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Every week there will be a 30-minute CS:GO show that will feature top players and competition highlights.
“With over 1.94 billion monthly active users on Facebook, this is a huge step toward expanding the reach of esports among mainstream audiences,” said Johannes Schiefer, vice president of social media and editorial at ESL, in a statement, reiterating this point. “Last year, ESL content generated over 2 billion impressions and reached over 200 million users on Facebook globally. Now, with the addition of live streaming for all major ESL events, as well as exclusive content around CS:GO and ESEA, we are excited to expand our reach to more audiences and build strong local communities of highly engaged esports fans,” he added.
The final plan for Facebook’s sports efforts are still unknown. It has recently backed off very high priced events such as the Thursday night NFL games but now seems to be buying up rights to other sports.
For now we will have to wait and see what Facebook’s final efforts are.
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