Riot Games has appointed social broadcasting platform Caffeine as an official streaming partner for its North American league, League of Legends Championship Series (LCS).
The deal isn’t exclusive, meaning that the LCS will still be broadcast on Amazon-owned platform Twitch.
Matt Archambault, Head of Esports Partnerships and Business Development for North America at Riot Games discussed the partnership in a release: “As our audience continues to grow and evolve, we’re excited to bring the LCS to new platforms and distribution channels ensuring our fans are able to watch the broadcast on their preferred devices. We’ve seen demand from our community around new streaming platforms and we’re excited to work with Caffeine to see what engaging content our community and aspiring shoutcasters will be able to create with our broadcasts.”
The partnership will allow fans of the LCS, and aspiring casters, to stream and live-host the competition on their personal channels. This covers the remainder of the Summer Split, playoffs, finals, and LCS regional qualifiers.
Ben Keighran, CEO of Caffeine also commented on the deal: “We’re proud to partner with Riot Games to help LCS fans and aspiring shoutcasters experience this content like never before. Our platform will deliver these matches with almost no latency, allowing fans to watch as if they were there, while also offering aspiring shoutcasters the ability to live host their own streams of the event and interact with fans in real time.”
LCS is partnered with companies such We Are Nations, Secretlab, and Alienware. Caffeine partnered with FACEIT in June to produce an exclusive show, ECS After Dark. It’s also in deals with the likes of Dignitas, Natus Vincere, FIFA, and DreamHack.
Esports Insider says: It’d have been a complete steal for Caffeine to acquire exclusive broadcasting rights for the LCS, and probably a bad move for Riot Games, so this seems like a solid way for the two companies to forge a deal. Allowing fans and casters to live-host each week’s action produces a new level of interaction and engagement so it’ll be interested to see the results of the partnership.