Call of Duty League and Overwatch League to be broadcast exclusively on YouTube

Activision Blizzard and Google have announced a multi-year strategic relationship that will see the upcoming Call of Duty League and Overwatch League broadcast exclusively on the YouTube platform.

This deal binds all broadcasts outside of China to YouTube for competitive Call of Duty, Hearthstone and Overwatch.

Previously, the OWL was streamed exclusively on Twitch in a two-year deal worth $90 million. Call of Duty fans had been left in the dark ahead of the Launch Weekend as to where they would be able to watch the debut games for the league.

Initially, a link to MLG.com was given as the place to catch the games but it now likely that this will simply host the YouTube stream in a similar way to Riot Games' own system that hosts Twitch and YouTube streams for their numerous global leagues and World Championship events.

Call of Duty fans can go www.youtube.com/codleague for all of the CDL action going forward, while Overwatch will be at www.youtube.com/overwatchleague.

In addition to this, Google Cloud will serve as the preferred provider for Activision Blizzard's game hosting infrastructure.

Early estimates priced the media rights for the CDL at $24m per season, but there have been no figures given out publicly since those rumours emerged.

StarCraft II will operate under the new ESL Pro Tour this year so will not be bound under this broadcast agreement despite Blizzard being its developer.

YouTube has been making strides into esports via content creators, signing 100 Thieves' Jack "CouRage" Dunlop and Rachel “Valkyrae” Hofstetter over from Twitch in recent months. Microsoft-backed platform Mixer also made waves after the signing of Tyler "Ninja" Blevins and Michael "shroud" Grzesiek, but Twitch has remained the dominant streaming service so far even with some big names departing.