Are You Paying Attention To eSports Yet? Activision Blizzard Hopes You Are

This morning, Activision Blizzard held their first NewFront at the Playstation Theater in Times Square. Their inaugural presentation wasn’t about a new game or content series, but rather a new frontier in entertainment: eSports. This past January, Activision made headlines by announcing their purchase of Major League Gaming, or MLG, for $46 million. This morning, MLG was formally introduced to the advertising community in a short presentation showcasing the benefits of the genre to brands.Senior Vice President of Activision Blizzard Media Networks Mike Sepso kicked the presentation off, heralding the reach of the community (Activision Blizzard’s proprietary network is larger than Snapchat and Twitter combined), the influencer heavy nature of the participants (with the numbers 1 through 26 fan favorites of the Austin X-Games being MLG pros), and the fact that this is an audience that will watch hours upon hours of live content. From there, former ESPN and NFL Network CEO Steve Bornstein discussed the already massive unique viewing audience of eSports fans, which is second only to major league football. Chris Puckett, the host of MLG’s equivalent to “SportsCenter” unveiled new enhanced viewing capabilities, called EVE, which along with the ability to overlay statistics and leaderboards, will also allow for fantasy and native ad integrations.The MLG programing calendar for 2016 and 2017 is an ambitious one. With one major and minor tournament  scheduled each quarter, they’re also going to double down on player profiles, original series, and expanded franchise productions. And like many other brands this NewFront season, they will be going Live on Facebook for daily broadcasts from the tournaments.Live will add to their already impressive live streaming prowess – The MLG Columbus Major tournament peaked at 1.6 million concurrent live views with 71 million video views resulting in 45 million hours of content consumed over five days, despite being the same weekend as the NCAA Final Four. The same Final Four, of course, is now broadcast on what should prove to be MLG’s biggest broadcast competition, Turner and their forthcoming ELeague.MLG is boasting about having a younger, more educated, and more affluent audience than ESPN. The question will be what brands are ready to get on board and enter the arena for eSports. TVRev will continue to cover this rapidly growing space and what it means for brands, broadcasters, and everyone else.