League of Legends team, Clutch Gaming has announced a partnership with live streaming service Bilibili. Clutch Gaming competes in the North American League Championship Series, while Bilibili also owns and operate a team in the Chinese LoL Pro League. As a part of the activation of the partnership, Bilibili Gaming and Clutch Gaming faced off in a Riot-sanctioned friendly match Monday evening live from Houston, Texas, where Clutch is based.
The two teams played in one serious showmatch, and three exhibition games which included the likes of Sebastian Park, Houston Rockets Vice President of Esports, and Daryl Morey, Houston Rockets General Manager.
The friendly match supposedly reached around 890,000 views between the Twitch stream in the United States and the Bilibili platform in China.
Thank you to the 890,000 fans who tuned in on @bilibili_en to watch our friendly match! pic.twitter.com/mNIbwV8KIo
— DIG Update (@DIGUpdate) October 9, 2018
Clutch Gaming is owned and operated by NBA team, The Houston Rockets and joined the NALCS in 2018 as the franchise model was being created.
Bilibili is a Chinese video sharing service that offers entertainment such as anime, comic, music and esports broadcasts. Along with owning the LPL team, Bilibili is also the owner of the Hangzhou Overwatch League expansion team for season two.
Clutch also holds sponsorship with streaming service Twitch, and PC peripheral company, Corsair.
Esports Insider: The partnership between Bilibili as a company and Clutch is mildly confusing, considering Clutch already has a partnership with Twitch. This could simply be an opportunity for Clutch to reach a bigger audience in China, despite the fact that it’s a North American team. The activation itself was brilliant seeing as there is a current gap before the group stages of the League of Legends World Championships really kick off. This was the perfect opportunity to showcase two international teams together in one place.