Facebook is announcing the creation of one of the deeper partnerships it has brokered to date for building a community that is centered on esports teams and leagues. The partnership is with Atlanta-based Hi-Rez Studios and provides Facebook exclusive rights to stream the new Paladins Premier League through Facebook Live as well as the ability to give amateur players a path to become professional gamers through Facebook Groups.
An additional component of the deal is the creation of a weekly Paladins Esports Show on Facebook's new Watch platform for shows, which will deliver news, insights and analysis of the league's competition.
"What we're trying to accomplish is build the world's community to play, watch and share games," says Patrick Chapman, who handles Gaming and Esports Partnerships at Facebook. "There's 800 million people connecting to games on Facebook, and we're constantly thinking of what we can do to engage that community and deliver more meaningful interactions."
The partnership gives Facebook access to engage over 15 million players of the first-person shooter game Paladins who are located around the world, and it connects Facebook to the ten WESA member organizations playing at the top level who will earn a minimum salary and participate in revenue sharing of league profits. WESA, founded in May 2016, counts as its members thirteen of the world's most popular esports teams, including Ninjas in Pyjamas, OpTic Gaming and Fnatic.
A big selling point of Facebook for Hi-Rez Studios, which became a popular video game studio based on its SMITE franchise, is Facebook's enormous global user base.
"Our attitude is to meet our community where they are," explains Hi-Rez Studios' co-founder and COO Todd Harris. "One of the things that attracted us to Facebook is how global they are as a platform combined with the size of their audience," adding that Paladins players will be able to link their player accounts on Facebook within the next month.
Harris also discovered earlier this year that the Paladins community was actively communicating on Facebook, discussing the game itself and expressing a desire to play competitively.
"Specifically, we found a Facebook group that our community formed without us, and was twice the size of our Reddit community that we were paying a lot of attention to," says Harris. "We then created a group that we moderate and participate in and grew it from 0-to-30,000 players in just one month."
The Paladins Premier League follows in the footsteps of Hi-Rez Studios' successful July launch of a $350,000 Paladins Global Series, which was a community-focused, open-bracket tournament series where amateur players recruited and formed teams from the official Paladins Facebook Group. Regional champions will be able to compete in the World Championships and also go up against qualifying Premier League teams. Hi-Rez Studios' investment in the new league will be over $3 million between salaries, prizes, etc., according to Harris.
"The compelling vision for me is that a young adult in Brazil today with a shared passion for Paladins can discover other people in his country that share that passion, form a team, play next week, win cash, and if he is good enough, go from amateur to pro within the same ecosystem," says Harris. "We are trying to provide this complete path to pro within the platform."
Darren Heitner is the Founder of South Florida-based HEITNER LEGAL, P.L.L.C. and Sports Agent Blog. He authored the book, How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know.
