ESL Gaming and Maincast extend media rights agreement for four years

ESL Gaming, the world’s leading esports company, has today announced that it will extend its exclusive collaboration with Maincast for a further four years. With the current agreement running until 2023, the addition of multiple years ensures fans in Russia and the rest of the CIS region can keep enjoying ESL Gaming’s full premium product portfolio in their local language until Intel® Extreme Masters (IEM) Katowice 2027.

As part of the extension, Maincast keeps the exclusive rights to broadcast ESL Gaming’s tournaments on its Twitch channels in Russian and other CIS languages. Moreover, the agreement covers the complete product portfolio consisting of ESL Pro Tour Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), ESL Pro Tour StarCraft® II, and ESL Mobile, as well as ESL Gaming’s competitions for Dota 2.

ESL Gaming and Maincast joined forces in 2020, and their partnership has already seen ESL Gaming’s audience in the CIS region grow vastly, and the total amount of views doubled since then. Hitting a peak of 382,000 concurrent viewers during IEM Katowice 2020, Maincast delivered some of the best numbers for CS:GO globally. Additionally, ESL One Los Angeles 2020 became the most-watched online tournament in Dota 2 on Maincast’s Twitch channels with over 13 million views. These are but a couple of the success stories that show how Maincast excels in Russian-language broadcasts.

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“Maincast is one of our biggest media partners and expertly localizes our competitions to fans all over the CIS region,” said Frank Uddo, Senior Vice President Global Media at ESL Gaming. “They are great to work with and we are particularly excited to see, through this seven-year partnership, how committed they are to significantly invest in esports long-term. It is a testament to how integral esports has become within the region and we look forward to building even more success in the future with them.”

“In 2020 Maincast signed a multi-year partnership agreement with ESL Gaming to broadcast their tournaments in Eastern Europe. In this period we’ve created an industry-defining product, finished numerous projects in close collaboration and provided on-site coverage of dozens of events,” said Andrii Grygoriev, CEO and co-founder of Maincast. “We are excited to announce that our partnership with ESL Gaming is extended up till Q2 2027. We’ve already begun working on long-term projects and looking for new ways of refining and improving our product. We will do our best to give our viewers even more high-quality broadcasts and on-site content, which you’ll always be able to find on our channels.”