Does Activision Blizzard see the business world as one big garage sale from which to cherry-pick deals? It certainly seems so, as the company has snapped up another acquisition for its portfolio: much of the assets of Major League Gaming.
Major League Gaming was an e-sports company, and we say “was” because it recently went out of business. MLG’s board of directors voted on December 21st to sell a large portion of its assets to Activision Blizzard for $46 million. The e-sports company’s CEO was also replaced by its former CFO.
A company that used to run several high-profile e-sports tournaments across North America, Major League Gaming apparently fell onto hard times as it faltered in competition to the ESL. MLG used to handle tournaments for games such as Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, and StarCraft 2.
There is no hard source and that site is the ONLY one reporting this info. I think this should be taken with a grain of salt until there is confirmed info.
It’s also a german based outlet breaking news on US IP. The information is so third party it’s practically third world, especially when something like that you would see changes on their website and structure immediately and yet MLG still list Giovanni as the CEO and is still continuing it’s operations after this news “broke”
CANDY CRUSH ESPORTS TOURNAMENTS!!!!
Armsbend Just a few things off of the top of my head:
* No longer sharing any revenue at all with ESL. Advertisements on streams, sponsorship deals, et al, all go to Blizz. This will save and / or generate a lot of money in the long run simply because they’re not losing any percentage of it. ESL has no doubt already soiled themselves.
* Full control over the e-sports events which means that Activ-Blizz games will always be present in e-sports.
* Free advertisement. Not that Blizzard needs it. They’ll control the streams & run in-stream (unblockable) ads for their own games & promotions, including possibly other (non-Blizzard) Activision titles, all without any unwanted (negative) commentary about DLC; not even slight jokes or fake “slip of the tongue” kind of commentary.
This is a long term investment that makes money for them, regains any percentage lost to ESL for their services, and gives them full control of what is streamed, when it’s streamed, where it’s streamed, and the attitudes / how the content is presented. It’s a very smart buy in a large corporation kind of way.
Silvercat18 h4 Well with Overwatch only having only a box price & free heroes & maps. I don’t understand how it could be a cash cow. Unless the cash cow is people buying it & making alot of money from esports.
Quincha Honestly if Activ-Blizz is the owner of MLG now, I doubt Anet would get any sort of deal from them at all.
But I personally think this could provide some competition that ESL needs.
Sorenthaz I personally think it is more Activision than Blizzard honestly. But it could be used as tool against ESL to keep supporting Blizzard game Esports cause if not than MLG would take it.
Tongle Not gunna lie, I laughed.
h4 Yup I think you are spot on with that – Overwatch is marked up as the next cash cow, I think it even has a cartoon series on the cards. Esports would be a natural fit and would also be the final smackdown to weaker rivals like Team Fortress 2, which is still struggling on and sucking up potentially valuable playercount that blizzard wants.
Happy New Year!
I look forward to all of Blizzard’s games, and a lot of other MMOs, getting into esports now via MLG. I really doubt that Blizzard spent $46million without a serious plan to do something to make that investment worth it.
deekay_zero Damonvile SoMuchMass Armsbend “hots has fallen flat but i’ll give you the other ones.”
Is that why HotS still has a fully healthy competitive scene, reasonable viewership on Twitch and as far as the information we have is concerned, is still making good money? If you’re not into esports, that’s fine, but just because you aren’t keeping up with something doesn’t mean that it isn’t relevant.
You may laugh at it, but that would just make you a bit silly. This is a very smart move on their part given their almost obsessive dedication with seeing Overwatch having a successful future in Esports. Hell, if their advertising department were to get creative, the brand alone will be worth a good amount. The sheer surrealism of Blizzard making “MLG” jokes as actual adverts would win them a good amount of cred by itself, even with people who don’ t really care the jokes.
If they planned on acquiring MLG and then having it actually managing their Esports scene, this would be a relatively bad call given the fact MLG as a company clearly was not very good at it. Knowing Blizzard though, they’re doing this for the resources and structure, with the branding coming as a bonus cherry on top of the cake.