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Riot Games joins forces with BAMTech

Riot·12/16/2016, 2:59:27 PM·4 votes·25,237 views

Today we’re thrilled to announce Riot Games and BAMTech have entered into a first-of-its-kind long-term commercialization partnership to deliver professional League of Legends esports content in regions around the world. We will be working closely with BAMTech to grow revenue in our sport through various means, including sponsorship and advertising. Beginning next year, we’ll also be collaborating to push the boundaries of the esports viewing experience, leveraging BAMTech’s best-in-class technology to create additional possibilities and opportunities for fans to access, and connect with, League of Legends.

This is a game changer for our sport. As we’ve said in the past, true economic sustainability is a critical means to ensuring a sport that lasts, and this represents a major step towards that goal. As an innovator in digital sponsorship and media sales, BAMTech will help us unlock long-lasting and meaningful value for our digital sport as it matures. In BAMTech, we have found a partner equally committed to building professional League of Legends towards the lasting future we believe in for teams, players and fans. We’re honored by their faith and belief in our sport.

A leading technology services and video streaming company formed by Major League Baseball, BAMTech has designed, developed and distributed world-class fan viewing experiences to millions worldwide across its many traditional sports, news and entertainment partners. We’re proud to represent their first step in the esports world and in partnership plan to create innovative and rich ways to add to fans’ existing options for viewing their League of Legends esports content. We’ll be sharing news on important milestones and projects in the future.

A development of this magnitude could only be possible with the kind of passionate fan base that supports League of Legends. Fans always will be the foundation for strong and successful sports. This kind of commitment to, and investment in, the sport we all love is a tremendous vote of confidence, and we believe this will unlock incredible things as we build our future together.

 

44 Comments

Jon117412/16/2016, 3:12:37 PM11 votes

So what does this mean for the fans (especially the broke collage student fans)

CBT Wizard12/16/2016, 3:17:05 PM6 votes

So is there going to be any streaming exclusivity or will the Twitch and YouTube streams still be available for free? Also is this for coverage of all regions or just the LCS ones?

dakm10212/16/2016, 3:49:58 PM4 votes

Love this change. gj riot and gl on this in the future :D

III BAKURYU III 12/16/2016, 3:58:26 PM3 votes

What does this mean? Are we going to see games in like a Google map sort of way, like camera fixed where get to scroll around the whole map while games are going on or what?

Tamuut1/5/2017, 9:27:35 PM2 votes

Does this mean that casters will finally be paid at the industry standard?

woodvsmurph12/20/2016, 11:48:49 PM1 votes

Does this mean we are looking at exclusive viewing of live games via BAMTech or their subsidiaries (ex: contract out to twitch or YouTube)? Minor costs to unlock live viewing of regional or slightly greater to unlock live viewing of all regions of pro play? Not sure what people would think of that, but it does seem likely that some type of cost to view matches live will be coming -- that and/or more advertising like you see on regular television. I imagine some would complain loudly and others would not mind at all -- plenty of people sub/support streamers, so I don't think this would be much different. I honestly would be surprised if neither more advertising for things beyond league itself and/or pay-to-view live doesn't happen after how much Riot provides for free: Runes, masteries, champs, skins, badges, etc.

Pippen The Short12/27/2016, 6:15:35 PM1 votes

For those who are not sure how this move changes anything:

Riot is moving the streaming and broadcast rights exclusively to MLBAMTech under the agreement that the streaming is still accessible for free but BamTech gets the right to sell commercial rights and there is some kind of revenue sharing for the commercials between Riot and BamTech.

So while this is a big change in terms of production, the net change here is pretty minimal. The stream changes hands and Riot gets guaranteed money.

Renn75/21/2017, 6:23:30 AM1 votes

Can Taliyah get a skin modeled after Toph from Avatar: the Last Airbender?

Pippen The Short5/22/2017, 8:25:46 PM1 votes

Can I just point out how long ago this was and how nothing has changed since. I'm really beginning to wonder about this deal.

Porphyry Green12/16/2016, 5:23:33 PM1 votes

"esports" is so boring to me, I have no idea why RIOT is so into it

Maximum Morde12/16/2016, 5:33:45 PM1 votes

What is BAMtech?

Iam5traight12/16/2016, 5:50:17 PM1 votes

blah blah blah blah blah . Who the hell are/is BLAMtech? They must not be very big.

Snow Kangaroo12/17/2016, 12:02:50 AM1 votes

All it means is that there will be ads in LCS, it's no biggie