Riot Games announced today that it is teaming up with FOX Sports to showcase one of the biggest professional eSports events in Oceania.
FOX Sports will carry the OPL Grand Final live and direct from the Courier-Mail Piazza, Brisbane, on Saturday 13 August, starting at 5:30pm (AEST) across foxsports.com.au, the FOX Sports app and across FOX Sports Now on Apple TV and Telstra TV. FOX Sports has also produced a number of exclusive, supporting on-demand videos for foxsports.com.au, the FOX Sports App and its Facebook followers.
“We are thrilled to be working with FOX Sports as it provides an additional platform for fans to engage with their favourite players and teams. It’s great that an experienced Australian sports media channel is investing in eSports seriously and we are excited to see how they bring that experience to bear to create great content for our fans,” said Daniel Ringland, Head of eSports and Competitive at Riot Games Oceania.
Les Wigan, Director of Operations and Digital at FOX Sports, added: “As Australia’s sports leader and the No.1 multisport website in the country, FOX Sports is ideally placed to bring the huge popularity of League of Legends to an ever-growing audience of eSport fans.”
Awareness of eSports is growing here and abroad, especially among millennials, with a recent study conducted by PwC[1] indicating that 34 per cent of 18-24 years olds are now aware of eSports.
Viewership is also on the rise. According to Newzoo’s[2] latest eSports report, eSports enthusiast and occasional viewers will increase from 226 million in 2015 to 256 million this year, with Asia-Pacific predicted to account for 44 per cent of the eSports traffic.
For the League of Legends World Championship final between SKT and Koo Tigers in Berlin’s Mercedes-Benz Arena last year, the unique viewer count was 36 million – a record-breaking high for any eSports event and a climb from the 2014 Samsung White-Royal Club matchup at Sangam Stadium, which drew 27 million unique viewers.
With the OPL Grand Final being a regional final on the path to Worlds, tens of thousands of Australian, New Zealand and international viewers are expected to tune in online to watch this year’s Grand Final in Brisbane.
To find out more about the OPL Grand Final, visit: http://oce.leagueoflegends.com/en/featured/oplfinals-2016
