FACEIT, the creators of the Esports Championship Series (ECS), and YouTube have announced a ‘multi-year partnership’ which will see YouTube become the exclusive online home of the competition. 
This is a particularly surprising one as the CS:GO competition was originally delivered as a partnership between FACEIT and Twitch. They’re not hanging around either as the release revealed that the exclusive deal will kick off on the 25th of March for the ECS Promotion matches.
The new channel can be accessed here: youtube.com/faceit. This deal means that Youtube is now the exclusive home of two sizable CS:GO tournaments. The Google owned organisation penned an exclusive deal to stream the next two seasons of the ESL Pro League earlier this year.
Michele Attisani, Chief Business Officer and Co-Founder of FACEIT explained: ”YouTube offers fans of the ECS an unmatched online viewing experience. YouTube is by far the most watched platform for gamers in the world and continues to innovate and lead on video technology, making it a great place for us to call our new home for the Esports Championship Series.”
Ryan Wyatt, Global Head of Gaming Content at YouTube added: “This is our most significant investment into esports to date and illustrates our continued commitment to growing esports with the hundreds of millions of gamers watching YouTube each day.
“The ECS revenue sharing and co-ownership structure reinforces our belief that all players should have a voice. We know the CS:GO community is already watching clips, highlights, and rebroadcasts on YouTube, so we are excited to be able to bring them all this same action live.”
Esports Insider says: This is another big win for Youtube but it’ll leave a lot of CS:GO Twitch fans a little dismayed at this decision. That aside, it shows the broadcasting rights race is well underway and we’ve no doubt that we’ll be announcing more similar deals for other competitions in the near future.