The Premier League for Paladins: Champions of the Realm is starting soon, and the game has never been more popular. Paladins has hit the 15 million player count recently, and this is great news for Facebook, which will be exclusively hosting the live content for the Premier League. Gameindustry.biz conducted an interview with Facebook’s Director of Global Gaming Partnerships Leo Olebe for more information.
Here’s a bit more about the partnership for the Premier League:
Hi-Rez Studios and the World Esports Association is launching the Paladins Premier League this autumn and will broadcast all league content solely through Facebook Live. It follows the $350,000 Paladins Global Series announced in July.
This is not Facebook’s first partnership involving eSports, either:
The deal comes after similar partnerships where Facebook has secured 5,500 hours of ESL’s tournament coverage, 1,000 hours of Wargaming’s esports content, and four monthly broadcasts from PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
Here’s more about why Hi-Rez chose Facebook for streaming content over other platforms like Twitch:
Hi-Rez cites various reasons for partnering with Facebook rather than a platform more attuned to video games content – Twitch being the obvious alternative.
For one thing, the Paladins Premier League and Global Series essentially arose from the studio’s discovery that members of its 15m-strong community were using Facebook to form teams and arrange matches – something the developer now assists with via an official Paladins Facebook Group. For another, Hi-Rez points to the “tremendous reach” of Facebook.
“It’s really not comparable [to anything else],” co-founder and COO Todd Harris tells us. “It’s also very global, and Paladins is a very global game. We’ve seen the Facebook statement and actions around enabling communities and powering video – both of those concepts are forged into our DNA. That’s the way we think about marketing our games. Having a partner that shares that gives us optimism.”
Are you excited for the Paladins Premier League?
[Source: Gameindustry.biz]
