Dailymotion, the fast-food of streaming video, is hosting some exclusive eSports programming. They are streaming the ESWC and the ASUS RoG tournament. These are two big-name tournaments that they have claimed. Today we want to discuss why they chose this move and what it tells us about the future of game streaming.
The Major Interested Point: Dailymotion and Exclusivity
Previously streaming had gone around various areas. You might be on YouTube but you might also have it up in various other places. There were exclusive events here and there but it was rarely a huge point of contention for one place to have it. The fact that Dailymotion is pushing for this means a few things for the industry:
- We’ll see more competition for exclusives. More sites will be trying to get them as well
- These companies will have to find more ways to police unauthorized streams
- The eSport scene in general is going to continue to grow
While in the past years, games like Minecraft, with the help of cheap Minecraft server hosting, were already quite near to the mainstream, this may signal that now eSports are going fully into it. It makes us wonder how long until YouTube competes with them over this. While each site has certainly had exclusives before we would almost never see big competition between channels. One would just pay their money and they’d go with it. Now instead of a bit of bidding and negotiation, we could see bidding wars down the road.
Is Bidding for Streamers on the Horizon?
The world of streaming is constantly changing, but often it follows in the footsteps of traditional sports industries like football. One example of such is betting, with a developing trend of predicting the outcome of esports with bitcoin. Other e-sporting events like League of Legends World Championship, Counter-Strike, and many more, are becoming too popular and punters seemingly, don’t want to miss out on the opportunity. If you would want to know about the rise in online betting on major esports tournaments globally, you could click here and read more. That said, it seems to be following similar evolutions in the football industry too, with media companies bidding for the rights to host exclusive matches.
TV companies like Sky Sports or BT sports have previously bidden thousands for the rights to broadcast particular league matches exclusively. With more streaming services on the rise being able to stand out from such competition becomes a necessity.
Right now a variety of streaming services have top streamers they pay. If the “exclusive” buzzword takes off we could see bidding for streamers themselves. Of course, this is all exposition but as we’ve explained, there are many similar bidding wars. If the money and the market gets big enough this could happen here as well. Only time will tell.
