For e-sports, it's on: Yahoo has just launched its own dedicated website to cover the booming electronic sports and gaming industry, dubbing it Yahoo Esports. The site will reside under its Sports vertical and offer live coverage of eSports events as well as reporting, blogging, video commentary, schedules and scores, among other things.
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Screenshot: Yahoo Esports promo video |
Initially, Yahoo will cover just a few games within the eSports segment: League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Heroes of the Storm, and Street Fighter V. More titles will be added later and fans can come to the site to get industry-wide event calendars, stats and player rankings, according to a Yahoo blog post.
Yahoo has brought aboard video games reporter Andrea Rene to host weekly eSports coverage, which will include commentary from Travis Gafford and Taylor Cocke on League of Legends, while competitive gaming veteran Dylan Walker has been tapped to cover Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Heroes of the Storm.
The addition of a live-streamed, eSports component to Yahoo's online properties is interesting in light of the company's move to drop some properties, including Yahoo Screen, its online video hub. In February, CEO Marissa Mayer said that the company would continue to focus on its Mavens (mobile, video, native ads and social media) initiative while realigning its content under four main verticals: News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyles.
While Twitch was perhaps the first live-streamed gaming service to catch widespread public attention in 2014 due to its rapid growth, other players are jumping into this space. YouTube Gaming opened its doors in August 2015. And both Turner Broadcasting and ESPN are increasingly focused on coverage of the eSports genre.
For more:
- the Daily Mail has this article
- see Yahoo's blog post
- see the release
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