ESL, the world’s largest esports company announced that it will bring content from two of the top esports competitions exclusively to Facebook in 2018. Facebook will be their main broadcast partner.
WESA, the World Esports Association, along with ESL, announced that the world’s top Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competition, CS:GO Pro League, will be broadcast exclusively on Facebook, kicking off with the upcoming Season Seven. Distribution will begin on February 13, 2018, and will run for four seasons of Pro League, through December 2019.
ESL will also broadcast one of its flagship circuits, ESL One on Facebook, featuring Dota 2 and CS:GO. The first event this year will be ESL One Genting 2018, taking place January 23-28, 2018, bringing 16 of the world’s best Dota 2 teams to Malaysia for a six day event. Additionally, ESL will produce and broadcast a weekly five-minute show celebrating the Dota community on Facebook Watch, Facebook’s platform for shows.
Competitions will be streamed exclusively via Facebook Live in English and Portuguese, with other languages available as well. All live broadcasts from CS:GO Pro League and ESL One will be available in 1080p/60fps on Facebook. Both Pro League and ESL One will also be streamed in VR.
ESL will also leverage Facebook’s innovative cross-posting feature. With cross-posting, ESL can easily post videos and reach audiences on all participating team and player Pages. The feature will work with live and 360 video, and it will be available soon for videos that were previously live.
Although Facebook users will have the easiest time finding and following the action within the platform, it is not required to have a Facebook account to watch Pro League or ESL One. Embedded streams will continue to be shown on the respective product pages.