Activision Blizzard to Broadcast Live eSports on Facebook

This is a weird thing. There's logic to it as facebook has more traffic and viewers than something like twitch. A broader user base than YouTube (Probably?). Wouldn't be surprised if they even bring in some Oculus exclusive content of sitting in the front row at different events. Where do you guys think all this stuff is heading?

ActiBlizz, I think, may be letting their marketing department think a little too much for them. While my opinion is only based on anecdotal evidence, I don't know any serious gamers who regularly use Facebook. They may have Facebook accounts, but they do not spend a significant amount of time on them. For myself, the only time I use Facebook is to update my company's page, so I'll be getting zero benefit out of this arrangement.

In any event, Facebook has more traffic and viewers than Twitch, but are those viewers at all interested in eSports? I'd say highly unlikely - they're probably too busy commenting on baby pictures or arguing about politics to notice.

@dukeking To be fair, I don't think this is a deal that was just done at the impetus of marketing. It may have been tied to the fact that when they acquired MLG they also inherited their own streaming infrastructure/platform in MLG.TV, which wasn't making much progress or had the user base that was as big as Twitch and they are trying to remedy that now by teaming up with Facebook with the hopes of getting more eyes and hopefully get more users as a result. In that sense, they can't team up with Twitch because MLG.TV was a competing product. Twitch wouldn't want them siphoning users away from their own platform as a result.

Well, it doesn't hurt them to be integrated on Facebook. Maybe they see convenience as an important factor for getting peo and watching Esports.

I don't see it as heading towards any kind of exclusivity though. That would be strange. If they were going to do something exclusive, it would be through a battle.net account.