Riot Games recently announced their new deal with the streaming company BAMtech, owned by Major League Baseball and Disney. The new $300-million deal will run through to 2023, giving BAMTech exclusive rights to stream and monetize the now very popular e-sports 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.

“BAMTech will help take League e-sports to the next level” Riot Games announced. BAMTech will reportedly take control of Riot’s streaming partnerships with Twitch and Youtube, and build a new app-based streaming service  that will monetize the game though sponsorship and advertising.

This will be BAMTechs first partnership with e-sports, but they are far from new to the game of streaming services, as they also run multiple streaming services already, including MBL’s At-Bat, Disney. WWE, NHL, HBO and others. League of Legends has never struggled to bring in viewers with their competitive tournaments, with well over 3 million followers over several channels, but have never managed to hold a consistent revenue stream from it.

Riot Games also announced recently that it would be increasing the LCS prize pool as well as teams receiving more opportunities to make money off of in-game items being purchased –  League has plenty of active players, close to if not more than 100 million active players every month (read that interview here), many of those players buy skins and champions, making the game very profitable as is.

No details have been announced in regards to what portion of the revenue created will be shared with RIOT, but reports say BAMTech will receive all profits until investment costs are covered. This also means there are no details as to whether teams will receive a share of the revenue and if so, how much.

Many have concerns for Twitch, thinking BAMTech will pull League of Legends off of the streaming service, but it is too early on in the deal to speculate as to what will happen, but if it does, it could hurt the streaming service, especially after China passed a new law limiting the games which may be streamed in the country. Only time will tell.

What are your thoughts on the topic? Comment below and let us know how you feel about this and whether or not this is a good idea!