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Uber claims Twitch doesn’t care about OWL partnership

Even though Blizzard Entertainment’s exclusive YouTube broadcasting deal for Overwatch League wasn’t extended, the league continues to be streamed... Fragster | 24. April 2023

Even though Blizzard Entertainment’s exclusive YouTube broadcasting deal for Overwatch League wasn’t extended, the league continues to be streamed exclusively on YouTube, causing confusion in the community. 

Following the announcement, the OWL caster named Mitch “Uber” Leslie has offered his take on why the league doesn’t seem to plan on returning to Twitch. He came forward via Reddit and claimed that nobody cares about the streaming platform.

Twitch or Youtube for OWL?

While the initial two seasons of OWL were broadcast on Twitch, Blizzard then made a surprising move of signing an exclusive three-year YouTube broadcasting deal for the Overwatch League and the Call of Duty League, leaving the biggest streaming platform for its competitor.

However, with the start of OWL Season 6, Blizzard has not signed a new deal for the league, neither with YouTube nor with Twitch. Nevertheless, it will continue to be broadcast exclusively on YouTube. Meanwhile, the CDL is being broadcast on both

While this decision caused a lot of confusion in the Overwatch community, Uber offered a possible explanation for this decision. Uber says Twitch isn’t bothered about partnering with the OWL.

In the caster’s recent Reddit, he explains why the league is not interested in broadcasting on Twitch. Furthermore, on his own Discord server, he said that the violet platform “doesn’t give a damn about the Overwatch League” and that higher viewership on Twitch didn’t mean anything.

Caster Uber claims Twitch doesnt care about the OWL partnership

Pure optics for old-school fans?

Many people in the community believe that the increased viewership on Twitch is good for the league, but the streamer disagrees:

“People think that the additional viewership on Twitch will help us, but that’s visual at best and Twitch doesn’t give a damn about actually working with the OWL/CDL. Twitch offers nothing more than a platform that old-school viewers like more as a hub, that’s it. I couldn’t care less about Twitch because they don’t fucking care about us LMAO.”

He then went on to speculate in his stream as to why Activision won’t explain the decision:

“I don’t think Activision Blizzard will be committed at the highest level to Overwatch League fans to explain the dynamics of this business decision. They won’t say anything. You’ll just see a freaking graphic that says ‘Watch on YouTube Gaming’. You will not know why, you will only be told.”

Alternate Kick?

Many people in the community have shared Uber’s views and agree with him. As is so often the case, Twitch does not come off well and also explains why many streamers are currently considering whether they should switch to Trainwreck’s competing platform Kick.

Some fans and streamers now believe that Kick could be the future of streaming, and it seems the platform has already turned a profit in its first quarter, which means its chances of becoming a replacement for Twitch aren’t too bad.

Header: Robert Paul | Blizzard Entertainment