YouTube Paid $160m For Activision Blizzard Esports Exclusivity, Reports Suggest

By Zuhaad Ali
Google | Activision

It looks like Google has paid Activision Blizzard a total of $160m to get their titles’ Esports tournaments stream exclusively on YouTube.

The news comes from Esports Observer, where sources said that the deal originally came in around $160m for Activision Blizzard AAA titles including Overwatch League, Call of Duty League, and Hearthstone. YouTube will exclusively broadcast these games’ Esports event for the next three years.

According to the reports, the majority of this $160m is for Overwatch League, and rest is paid for Call of Duty League. As for Hearthstone, it looks like it was thrown in the deal as a freebie.

This exclusive deal between Activision Blizzard and Google was officially announced last month. At this point, we still don’t have the exact numbers for each title i.e. Call of Duty and Overwatch.

There were some speculations about Activision Blizzard pulling their titles from GeForce Now because of their partnership with Google. What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments!