CDL co-streamers are combating YouTube exclusivity

It was expected to happen, and now they have to deal with it. The Call of Duty League will be returning to exclusively YouTube.

With various co-streamers being housed on Twitch, the creators had to be creative to contend with their audience while also being able to cover the professional matches with the CDL set to kick off today (December 8). 

Back to YouTube

Call of Duty is one of the titles which has benefitted the most from so-called co-streaming, a practice in which streamers cover an esports event as an alternative broadcast for fans to enjoy the content.

With Twitch still being a more beneficial platform for streamers like Seth "Scump" Abner or Thomas "ZooMaa" Paparatto, the multistreaming approach allowed the creators to bring a unique flavour along with their personal audience to the games.

Streamers were allowed to show the live in-game footage during their broadcasts, under a co-streaming agreement, and reacted to the content directly. It provided a more direct experience to their audience, and during their return season to multiplatform streaming, CDL broke several viewership records.

However, for the 2023/24 season, the CDL announced that it would be returning exclusively to YouTube. In 2020, Activision Blizzard entered a media-rights deal with YouTube for a reported $160 million over three years for all its esports broadcast offerings. It also included the now-closed Overwatch League.

Said deal expired earlier this year, which allowed the CDL a brief return to Twitch. Given the current economic realities of the esports industry, it is doubtful that the CDL received a comparable deal, though no details on the new agreement have been shared so far.

With the exclusivity deal also come restrictions for watch parties who are no longer allowed to stream the broadcast footage outside of YouTube. 

Streamers find workaround

Anticipating the move that was announced late, but already reported by Dexerto’s Jacob Hale in the June, co-streamers came prepared and offered a workaround for the situation. Both Scump and ZooMaa announced that they'd be streaming on both platforms, though Twitch would be running without gameplay due to the restrictions. 

Specifically for Twitch viewers, one potential issue that could hurt the quality of the co-stream would be to sync the gameplay action of the main broadcast to the co-stream.

Faced with similar issues in the past, the communities of Overwatch League co-streamers created software solutions such as gigabra.in, a tool that would synchronise the timelines of the main broadcast and the co-stream.

The CDL is set to kick off at 8pm BST / 9pm CET / 3pm EST today with the opener of the Atlanta FaZe against the Boston Breach.