YouTube Partners With FACEIT For eSports Streaming

In a bid to burnish its offerings in the eSports space, YouTube and eSports platform FACEIT announced a partnership Thursday that will have its eSports Championship Series league be exclusively streamed on YouTube.

The multi-year deal will have the league, which features developer Valve’s first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, start streaming via FACEIT’s YouTube page March 25. As Reuters notes, FACEIT had previously partnered with gaming streaming service Twitch for the league’s initial seasons.

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In addition to hosting eSports Championship Series matches, YouTube will also partner with the league in other areas. Viewers will have features like replay playback during matches and YouTube plans to work with league members to grow their individual viewing audiences on YouTube channels.

In a statement, Ryan Wyatt, global head of gaming content at YouTube, said the move reflects YouTube’s interest in the eSports community.

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“This is our most significant investment into esports to date and illustrates our continued commitment to growing esports with the hundreds of millions of gamers watching YouTube each day,” Wyatt said. “The ECS revenue sharing and co-ownership structure reinforces our belief that all players should have a voice. We know the CS:GO community is already watching clips, highlights, and rebroadcasts on YouTube, so we are excited to be able to bring them all this same action live.”

Within the past few years, eSports has seen a massive growth in investment as eSports revenue is expected to break more than $1 billion by 2019. With YouTube’s investment in the eSports Championship Series, the company looks to be the latest to draw from the spike in interest for eSports content.