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Counter-Strike 2 (2023)

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Facebook's Giant Step Into Esports May Be a Look At Its Future.
Facebook may have decided it doesn’t want to be a media company, but it might just want to be a gaming platform. The company announced today that it will be the exclusive destination for multiple leagues from esports federation ESL. Look out, top-down cooking videos and insane Russian dashcam clips: you may soon be competing with 360 no-scope headshots for users’ “meaningful interactions.”

Starting January 23, ESL One, which features tournaments for both Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments, as well as ESL’s dedicated CS:GO Pro League, will broadcast through Facebook Watch, the social network’s streaming-video component. That means tournaments, but it also means recaps, highlights, and a week-in-review show—all of which are already hugely popular on streaming platform Twitch.

That fact raises an obvious question, though: If you’re ESL, why not just sign with Twitch? The platform, which Amazon owns, is already a destination for this kind of partnership. The Overwatch League—Blizzard’s ambitious challenge to conventional sports leagues—will exclusively host its broadcasts on Twitch for the league's first two years.

“We look at Facebook as the best of both worlds,” says Ken Hershman, the commissioner of the World Esports Association, an industry collaboration between top teams and ESL. “It’s a tremendous streaming platform, but it’s obviously a social and engagement platform.” Using Facebook’s targeting capabilities, ESL will be able to extract highlights from the broadcasts and cross-post them on the pages of individual teams. These videos will live in Facebook Watch and surface on users' news feeds as well.

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