NEW DELHI: Rooter, the game streaming platform, announced today that it had acquired the media rights for all of Skyesports’ IPs in one of the largest media rights deals in esports, for the next one year.
Skyesports, the wholly owned subsidiary of Jet Skyesports Gaming Pvt Ltd, is the biggest esports tournament organizer in South Asia that conducts competitions under its self-owned IPs.
Moving forward, all of Skyesports’ original competitions will be broadcast exclusively on Rooter. Keeping in line with Skyesports’ and Rooter’s aim of making esports and game streaming as accessible as possible, the tournaments will be streamed in several languages which include Hindi, English, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, and Telugu. Viewers who tune into Skyesports’ competitions on Rooter will also be given some exclusive rewards, it said in a press statement.
Rooter, which is commonly labeled as the ‘Twitch of India,’ already has a substantial user base in the country with more than 35 million downloads on the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, it said.
This deal will enable the platform to further tap into the esports market by leveraging Skyesports’ large viewer base.
Last year, Skyesports generated more than 200 million viewers across all its tournaments and achieved a peak concurrent viewership record of 221,000 during the Skyesports Championship 3.0 BGMI Finals.
Rooter will also be producing additional content based on Skyesports’ IPs throughout the year to offer more entertainment to fans.
Commenting on the strategic agreement, Dipesh Agarwal, co-founder and COO, Rooter, said: “We also look forward to working with Shiva and the rest of the team to provide multiple engagement opportunities for fans with esports teams on Rooter’s platform.”
Speaking on the deal, Shiva Nandy, founder and CEO, Skyesports said: “By distributing the media rights, we are empowering Rooter to implement strategies to further engage our already large audience. We look forward to closely working with them throughout the year to enhance the watching experience for the viewers while building esports from the grassroots level and launching more premium IPs.”
Rooter was founded in 2016 by Piyush Kumar and Agarwal.
