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League/Tournament Brands:
- Berlin-based data startup Bayes Esports Solutions has attained exclusive worldwide distribution rights for the top League of Legends competitions.
- The DOJO Madness/Sportradar venture will improve the granularity and accuracy of match data for broadcasts, live tickers, and other applications.
- Bayes CEO Martin Dachselt emphasized that no media company to date has received data at such a high level from Riot Games.
Bayes Esports Solutions has acquired world data distribution rights for Riot Games’ largest esports competitions. The Berlin-based startup—a joint venture between DOJO Madness and Sportradar—will make data from League of Legends matches easier to use, and deliver it to media customers and data consumers. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The multi-year agreement will initially cover live data for the regional League of Legends leagues for North America, Europe, and South Korea, as well as the World Championship and Mid-Season Invitational. Expansion to additional regional competitions in the coming years is under discussion. “Especially for the small leagues, which need to be more visible for the world in viewership, this is a big chance,” Bayes CEO Martin Dachselt told The Esports Observer.
Bayes will deliver pre-match, real-time, and post-match insights from competitions, and will also receive productization rights, allowing for the development of products such as gamified widgets and match trackers. “We offered [Riot] solutions that go beyond the monetization,” said Dachselt, adding that the strong industry relationships of Sportradar, Bayes’ vetting process for potential customers, and ability to define data applications factored into Riot’s decision to partner.
Data from League of Legends matches have typically come from manual extraction from the live video stream, limiting any information outside the observer camera view. Some companies, such as Google already run live tickers, but display only basic real-time information, such as kill counts, gold, and champions selected. “Now you have automatic and very granular information from Riot,” said Dachselt.
Dachselt added there would be upcoming announcements regarding use of the data for non-commercial users. “For Riot, it’s not only the monetization aspect but strengthening the community,” he said, noting that the deal between the two companies allows Bayes to distribute the data for the sake of research and community projects.
Competitive integrity was not a focus of the deal, but Dachselt said the issue remains important to Bayes. Sportradar currently has a separate partnership with Riot to monitor global betting activity for League of Legends competitions.
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