BLAST Premier partners with WePlay for Russian broadcasts
BLAST Premier has announced a two-year deal with WePlay Esports. As a part of this deal, WePlay will become the exclusive broadcaster of BLAST Premier’s global Counter-Strike tournament series in the CIS region.
The partnership
The CIS region is the Commonwealth of Independent States. It is a regional intergovernmental organization of nine members formed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The countries that make up the commonwealth are Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
This is one of BLAST and CSGO most popular regions for viewership. According to a recent study from Esports Charts Russian-language esports broadcasts in 2020 amounted to a total of 200 million hours watched and CSGO was the second most popular esport in the region. It certainly helps that CSGO betting is also hugely popular in the region.
With this deal, WePlay has exclusive Russian language media rights to broadcast the rest of the years BLAST CSGO events as well as the entire 2022 season. With the popularity of the esport in the region it looks like they went with a major player in esports event broadcasting.
Comments from the organisations
Alexander Lewin, VP of Distribution and Programming for BLAST, said:
“We’re delighted to welcome WePlay Esports as our latest broadcast partner – with their extensive expertise in Counter-Strike production, WePlay Esports will help to bring the very best of BLAST Premier to Russia for the remainder of the 2021 season and beyond. BLAST has always enjoyed great support and viewership in the CIS region and we look forward to maintaining our industry leading esports production and entertainment for the community to enjoy.”
Maksym Bilonogov, Chief Visionary Officer and General Producer at WePlay Esports, said:
“We at WePlay Esports recognize BLAST Premier as one of the best CSGO circuits out there, which uses technology and creativity to deliver world-class entertainment. Our team will go all out to bring the same level of show to the CIS audience and make sure that the love for the game in the region only grows stronger with time.”
BLAST is growing their audience
In the last few months, BLAST has been aggressively expanding its reach across the globe by signing and expanding broadcast partnerships. If you want to bet on Blast Premier events, chances are there will be a local broadcaster that can show the games.
BLAST Premier have been expanding their media and broadcast reach. In April they signed eight new media rights deals for the rest of the 2021 season. That means that they can now reach a number of new regions around the world, including Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Iceland, Canada, Kosovo, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, and the Caribbean.
In June, they extended and expanded their partnership with Douyu, China’s leading live streaming service. Douyu will remain the exclusive broadcaster of all BLAST Premier events of the 2021 season in China. The big change for the expanded partnership is the fact that Douyu will now get a chance to deliver the first ever BLAST event in China.
Now, BLAST Premier will be shown in 18 different languages and across 157 territories, they may be one of the biggest esports events in the world.
