Mentioned in this article
League/Tournament Brands:
- Maincast, an esports content/production company in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region, signs a mutli-year media deal with ESL and DreamHack.
- The agreement grants exclusive broadcasting rights to ESL Pro Tour Counter-Strike games, and relevant Dota 2 competitions.
- Maincast and its Twitch channels have long provided the primary Russian-language streams for Dota 2 Majors, as well as The International championships.
Maincast has signed a three-year broadcast deal with ESL and DreamHack, gaining exclusive rights to the two company’s ESL Pro Tour Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) competitions, DreamHack’s DreamLeague, and ESL’s Dota 2 tournaments. The deal regionally covers Russia and the CIS, including Ukraine and Georgia. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Expiring February 2023, the agreement will start with the DreamHack Leipzig event and will include both the DreamHack Open qualifier event and DreamLeague Season 13—the first Dota 2 Major of the year. In the announcement, Maincast reported that its coverage of Dota 2, CS:GO, and other games generated over 40M hours watched on both Twitch and YouTube in 2019, and its Russian-language broadcasts of The International were the most-watched globally.
“Maincast will not only play an important role in delivering DreamHack and ESL content to our existing fans in Russia and CIS over the next three years, but also in attracting new viewers and fans to our premier CS:GO and Dota 2 tournaments as the esports audience continue to grow,” said DreamHack Co-CEO Marcus Lindmark and ESL Chief Commercial Officer Thomas Schmidt in a joint statement.
The ESL Pro Tour combines the top CS:GO competitions of ESL and DreamHack (both companies under the Modern Times Group portfolio) into one event circuit. The brand also now includes StarCraft II and Warcraft III competition circuits, which are not part of this agreement.
