Overwatch League signs exclusive deal with Twitch

Phew, it's not just on the MLG viewer.

With less than 24 hours to go before the Overwatch League regular season finally begins, Blizzard has announced that Twitch will be the highly anticipated esports competition's official third-party streaming partner, which means you don't have to use that MLG thing.

Every regular season, playoff and championship match will be viewable for free over at twitch.tv/overwatchleague, and the two-year deal runs for the entirety of the league's first two seasons. There will also be streams available in Korean and French.

Blizzard also said that it was working with Twitch to develop rewards for fans who watch on stream, including in-game items, although that stuff won't be announced just yet. Given that holdup, the timing of the announcement, and the Overwatch League's enormous 18-month buildup, we suspect this means the Twitch deal was a bit last-minute, but hey.

In other OWL news (hoot), Blizzard recently confirmed the Overwatch League broadcast talent, which includes a host of well-known esports names. We already knew that the entertaining duo of Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles and Erik "DoA" Lonnquist would be casting, but the full "talent show" post also identifies figures like regular CS:GO hype man Chris Puckett, the excellent CS:GO caster Auguste "Semmler" Massonnat, and Alberto "Crumbz" Rengifo. Crumbz, like MonteCristo and DoA, will be very familiar to League of Legends fans, and brings excellent analysis.

The Overwatch League finally begins today, January 10 (praise be!), at 4pm PST / 7pm EST when the San Francisco Shock take on the Los Angeles Valiant, with three other matches also on the card today. Check out the full schedule for details.

Editor-at-Large

Tom is probably best known for the 15 years - FIFTEEN YEARS! - he spent at Eurogamer, one of Europe's biggest independent gaming sites. Now he roams the earth, but will always have a home here at AllGamers. You can try and raise him from his deep, abyssal slumber through tom.bramwell@allgamers.com or he's also on Twitter.

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