The ESL announcement of an exclusive deal with Facebook for live-streaming their events has created quite a controversy in the community. People are reluctant to change, but even the ones who have given it a try are disappointed. Facebook has been trying to get into esports streaming since quite some time. They tried it with other titles such as Hearthstone & Paladins, but the ultimate goal in esports has to be from amongst the top titles. With Blizzard and Riot already controlling their own Products that only leaves Valve’s two successful game titles. CS GO and Dota2 have spearheaded the growth of esports which has largely been driven by Twitch viewership numbers.

The Announcement

ESL announced the deal first on their official website. It was a decision that came as a big surprise to many of the fans. While the reactions are detailed further down in this post, you can read the actual announcement here.

The announcement :

We are happy to announce that Facebook will be our main broadcast partner for the highest level of esports competition – the CS:GO Pro League and the ESL One circuit, with full English and Portuguese coverage, which will be filling your screens exclusively on the Facebook platform and also available on embedded streams on the respective event websites. One of the key components that brought this project to fruition was the recent introduction of Facebook Watch. With it, Facebook has not only introduced a structured platform for video distribution but also implemented technological upgrades that esports audiences have grown to expect, such as streaming in 1080p/60fps and VR. Facebook will also make video content easily accessible for Facebook’s 2 billion monthly active users, allowing much easier promotion of esports content to the millions of esports fans on the platform. Facebook has also recently started rolling out features that make watching a collaborative experience, such as their “viewing with friends” features. Now, when tuning into shows on Facebook, you can switch between general chat and private chats with groups of friends who are currently also watching the broadcast. You can also easily invite your friends that aren’t watching yet into your viewing group via Messenger. With many more product innovations on the roadmap for the future, we’re looking forward to Facebook further developing the viewing experience on the platform in 2018. Official tournament broadcasts will air in both English and Portuguese, with a variety of other language options available. Starting with Dota 2 at ESL One Genting 2018 from January 23-28 and CS:GO Pro League Season 7 on February 13th, non-stop content is coming your way. On top of tournament live streams, we’re excited to utilize Facebook Watch to produce additional broadcasts, such as a weekly show for Dota 2.

Events on Facebook

The original announcement clearly states that ESL Pro League and ESL One events will be covered by Facebook. This includes the English as well as Portuguese stream for the events.

The events which come under this deal are listed below :

Genting 2018.

Cologne 2018.

New York 2018.

ESL Pro League.

This is probably not the definitive list of all events to be streamed on facebook, but it gives us a general idea that majority of the big events organised by ESL will be on Facebook from now on.

What were the options?

ESL and Twitch got into a huge controversy a few seasons ago when Twitch refused to pay fair price for live streaming ESL events. This arrogance obviously came from the fact that Twitch was the sole streaming platform that mattered in the industry. We have seen other competitors such as Azubu, Hotstar amongst others try their hand and fail miserably. Reasons for their failure ranged from a poor streaming platform to lack of funds.

Last year we saw ESL Announce an exclusive streaming deal with Youtube Gaming. Youtube is involved in esports, with the largest collection of gaming videos on the Internet. Gamers have used Youtube alongside Twitch for several years now. While the usage patterns were more for watching videos rather than live streaming the events, the familiarity of Youtube definitely made the switch reasonable for fans. Despite the familiarity, there was a big uproar during the announcement last year.

Twitch – Eleague

But that leads us to the question: Why did ESL not sign with Twitch or Youtube. Twitch recently signed a multi-year deal with Eleague for exclusive broadcasting rights. This will cover Eleague events in the future as well as the Major this weekend. ESL is definitely a company with more events and offerings in it’s kitty as compared to Eleague. ESL has two big games for which it hotst tournaments in Dota 2 and CS GO. So it is slightly difficult to understand the fact that Twitch would not want to sign an exclusivity deal with ESL. We do not have the details of the negotiations, but it does seem that money played a big factor while deciding not to go with the industry leader on this one.

Youtube Gaming

We have had esports events with hundreds of thousands of viewers on Youtube Gaming. So when ESL decided to sign on Facebook, we wonder what kind of research has gone into the decision. Youtube has a great platform, some would argue it’s platform is currently better than Twitch. With the ability to rewind streams and watch something that you missed out on, Youtube offers more flexibility when it comes to watching streams.

Viewer Statistics

ESL One Genting 2018 is still an ongoing event. The Dota 2 minor which features some of the best teams in the world has hardly seen much activity on the official stream. There are reports of some of the best matchups in the game featuring only a few hundred viewers.

At the same time, alternative third-party streams on Twitch were cruising with more than 20,000 viewership numbers. Valve’s regulations allow streaming from the native Dota 2 Client. The streams would have to not be monetized in any way, they should not include sponsor logos or banners. They should not contain any proprietary content produced by the event organizer.

A full statement from Valve regarding the streaming rules from the Dota TV Client can be read on their webpage.

To that end, in addition to the official, fully-produced streams from the tournament organizer itself, we believe that anyone should be able to broadcast a match from DotaTV for their audience. However, we don’t think they should do so in a commercial manner or in a way that directly competes with the tournament organizer’s stream. This means no advertising/branding overlays, and no sponsorships. It also means not using any of the official broadcast’s content such as caster audio, camerawork, overlays, interstitial content, and so on. Finally, this is not permission for studios to broadcast each other’s events. In general, everyone should play nicely together, and we think the boundaries should be pretty clear.

For now, viewership numbers for the only ESL event to analyze have been abysmally low. With just a few thousands of viewers on the platform, these numbers are definitely nowhere near what ESL used to negotiate with Facebook.

Community Reaction – Is it Justified?

The community reaction to the ESL Facebook decision has been largely negative. The reasons, however, have been a mixture of logical as well as hardline extreme. Facebook has seen a lot of negative publicity over the recent years. As someone said, Facebook is just a glorified Birthday calendar right now. With socializing moving towards new and probably better platforms in Instagram, Snapchat etc; Facebook has seen a general hate from many.

However, that still does not take away the fact that Facebook is the biggest social media platform out there. The number of people that would have access to watching esport streams is truly enormous when it comes to Facebook. However, despite the wide access provided via the Facebook platform, the number of viewers has actually reduced.

This comes in wake of the average gamer’s hate for Facebook as a company. The quality of the Facebook stream is extremely poor right now. Facebook Watch requires the viewer to install Flash player in order to be able to watch the matches. We also have Facebook issuing regular prompts to login to their service. Facebook streaming has been a very difficult platform to adjust to. In addition to this, there has been little to no advertisement of the Facebook platform. This is another reason for the low viewership numbers.

People have been extreme in their reactions to the Facebook decision. Some fans have even canceled their tickets for upcoming ESL events for which they had already bought tickets to.

The community has the right to voice their opinion about a product. ESL should view this opportunity and backlash as valuable feedback about what is wrong with their product. They need to take away something constructive from the entire episode.

Public Relations, What?

The ESL staff mismanaged the entire situation from the start. This mismanagement along with the public outbursts by their Vice president on social media has definitely hurt their image.

Here is how many Dota tournaments there are going to be in the future if noone is taking money for broadcast rights anymore: Exactly one (The International). Having your cake and eating it too never works. — Ulrich Schulze (@theflyingdj) January 23, 2018

We have had a series of tweets from ESL personnel as well as industry analysts. They have only blamed the community for their knee-jerk reaction towards the announcement.However there are pros and cons to the announcement, and we never had a chance at a meaningful discussion of the same. However, blaming fans is never the right option in this situation.

The most unfortunate thing about all of this is that the front page of the Dota 2 subreddit is filled with “ESL this ESL that” threads instead of actual talk about the matches of the Minor. — Ulrich Schulze (@theflyingdj) January 23, 2018

To add to their problems, we saw the event organizers threatening to issue DMCA warrants against streamers on Twitch. They followed it up by taking down a few Twitch Channels that were streaming the tournament. Some of these twitch channels were extremely popular and that only forced the fans to view ESL in a more negative light.

Valve clarifies it’s rules

The community reaction to the DMCA notice issued by ESL to various streamers was largely negative. Since Dota TV is technically Valve’s IP, third-party organizations do not have any rights to issue DMCA notices.

With the first announcement about Dota TV streaming seemingly needing some clarification, Valve came out with a clarification soon after.

No one besides Valve is allowed to send DMCA notices for games streamed off of DotaTV.

This means third parties such as Twitch, ESL cannot take down streams which do not have the broadcasters’ unique content. The streams cannot use the casters voice, the camera movements used by the spectators. But they are free to cast the games in their own unique way.

ESL needs to fix some things

ESL needs to set the record straight with their actions right now instead of engaging in verbal spats with fans on social media. The announcement and its reactions caused a lot of damage to the ESL image. ESL should prioritize repairing their image right now.

One of the first steps would be to actually make the Facebook stream better. It is unimaginable that

with such low viewership numbers, the stream still remains buggy and stutters. It is one of the first things that ESL and Facebook, with their huge technical expertise should fix. You cannot sell a subpar product no matter how much money you invest in it.

The second step would be to repair their Public relations. ESL need to have a better Public Relations team. The customer is always right. ESL have to fix the product based on a large amount of feedback that has been provided so far. While most of the feedback has been hardline, there is still lots of honest feedback in the mix.

ESL have their work cut out for them. In the meantime, if they ever their streaming quality, we urge you to give them a chance and go back to watching your favorite casters and teams play your favorite games.