Riot Games has announced that live streaming platform Trovo will continue to be an official broadcaster of the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) for its 2021 Spring Season.
Trovo was launched in 2020 by Chinese technology firm Tencent, which also owns Riot Games.
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The 2021 Spring season of LEC began on January 22nd and will continue through March 14th. Other sponsors for the current season include main sponsors KitKat and Alienware, as well as Logitech G, LVM Versicherung, and KIA.
Trovo issued a statement regarding the agreement: “We’re excited to be partnering with Riot Games again on LEC. The Trovo League of Legends community has been growing and we are happy to offer them another year of exciting and competitive League of Legends content for the European region. We also welcome all League fans to join Trovo and discover new ways to enjoy League content.”
Tencent’s new streaming platform entered beta in October 2020 a few months after Microsoft’s Mixer platform officially closed its doors. Trovo immediately sought to lure top Western talent to the site, offering the first 500 partners a guaranteed $30m (~£21.95m) income over the subsequent 18 months.
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Trovo still has a long way to go before it can become a major competitor to Twitch. Since the start of the spring season, LEC’s official Trovo account has garnered peak viewership of just 1,230 compared to 249,000 on Twitch, per Esports Charts.
Esports Insider says: Mixer didn’t represent a large portion of the live viewership market compared to Twitch, but Tencent jumped at the opportunity to compete just the same. Using Trovo for the LEC has several advantages for Tencent because they can control the broadcast and secure exclusive partnerships in exchange for direct access to Riot Games. In addition, Trovo is unlikely to run into financial trouble any time soon — its megacorporation parent company has plenty of time to strategise and do things their own way.