DouYu acquires Chinese broadcast rights to BLAST Premier

Chinese live stream platform DouYu has acquired the media rights to BLAST‘s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament, BLAST Premier.

The deal lasts for the remainder of 2020 and sees DouYu receive the exclusive broadcast rights to the event in the Mandarin language.

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DouYu is said to have had 163.6 million monthly active users in 2019 and it reportedly accounts for a large portion of the total viewership that BLAST Premier receives.

Alexander Lewin, VP Distribution and Programming for BLAST, spoke on the deal in a release: “Our partnership with streaming giant DouYu is further testament to the rapidly growing popularity of BLAST Premier in China. The Chinese market continues to play an integral role in the global esports world, and we are delighted to team up with DouYu to entertain millions of BLAST fans in China.”

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Earlier this year, BLAST sold the Latin American media rights for BLAST Premier to Argentine television sports channel TyC Sports. It also holds broadcast deals with the likes of DAZN, TV 2 Denmark, Winstrike, RTP, and ES1.

The tournament organiser hasn’t allowed the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to stop it in its tracks. Despite not being able to host LAN tournaments as planned, it has expanded into Dota 2, launched new online events for CS:GO, and raised €12.5 million (£11.1 million) in investment.

Esports Insider says: BLAST has done a wonderful job in ensuring it’s still active throughout the global pandemic, making moves not many would’ve expected, and it’s good to see it’s still determined on ensuring its events are viewed by as many people as possible. Media rights deals such as this are bolstering tournament organisers’ revenue and that is a great – and much needed – thing.

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