Newbee wins ESL ONE Genting 2018

Stream Hype over Facebook stream rights.

The recent squabble in the eSports community came up with the broadcast rights of English streams for ESL One events to be exclusive on Facebook.

28^th Jan marked the end of ESL One Genting- 2018 with Team Newbee raising the Winners Cup after 3-1 win against the TI7 Winners Team Liquid. ESL One Genting 2018, a Minor DOTA 2 Pro Circuit event with Prize pool of 400,000 USD and 400 Qualifying Pro Circuit Points concludes with drama ongoing around Twitch and famous streamers like Bulldog and BSJ .
Team Newbee : 200  Points
Team Liquid : 120 Points
Team Secret and Team Evil Geniuses : 40 Points (each)

In the group stage, the concurrent viewership was seen around 10,000 on the Main Broadcast page. And the numbers kept on flying high reaching over 55,000 by the end of the tournament. There were also other popular broadcasters getting active viewers in thousands which kept on increasing as the top tier teams advanced to the main bracket.

Getting into the English broadcast ownership, Facebook provides a completely different social interaction platform for the eSport fans and active gamers with the live game stream connecting players in a more convenient and familiar environment.

In India, majority of live gaming stream is seen on Twitch, which in itself is not very up to standard viewership compared to other countries. Most of Indian eSports enthusiasts have been seen active on Youtube watching VODs of top tier players instead of engaging live on twitch. But with Facebook stepping in and joining hands with one of the Top eSport event organizers, and the number of viewers that facebook can provide, the whole scenery would be a lot bigger with the Indian community being more familiar and ease of using the social media handle.

There were still a lot of memes being pushed around which was further joined by DMCA notices. But with World’s top teams participating in the tournament, and famous commentators like ODPixel and Blitz, the event broadcast went on pretty smoothly with viewers surmounting the toll of viewers for the Galaxy Battles Tournament.