Activision confirm plans for rewards for watching CDL and OWL on YouTube

Activision Blizzard Esports CEO, Pete Vlastelica, has announced that they are exploring ways to offer rewards for fans that watch the Call of Duty League on YouTube.

Prior to the Call of Duty League’s Launch Weekend kicking off, it was announced that Activision Blizzard had teamed up with YouTube Gaming in a multi-year deal that gives competitive Overwatch, Hearthstone and Call of Duty a home on the Google-owned platform.

Mere days after the announcement, Vlastelica has revealed that Activision are working closely with YouTube to provide exclusive rewards for their viewers in a bit to make the viewing experience much more immersive. 

The ability to claim desired in-game drops for watching competitive action has resulted in viewership numbers skyrocketing for many esport titles. Players have been rewards with supply drops in past Call of Duty titles when watching on Twitch.

During the Overwatch League’s 2019 season, players had the opportunity to claim exclusive loot as a reward for tuning into the competitive action on Twitch — and this resulted in a sharp increase in viewership on the Amazon-owned platform. 

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With the OWL, CDL and Hearthstone all jumping ship over to YouTube, fans were left in the dark regarding the aforementioned loot system which had previously proven extremely popular.

However, per Vlastelica’s Tweet, Activision Blizzard are: “exploring ways to offer rewards for watching our broadcasts on YouTube in the future.”

Former Call of Duty caster and the current Global Head of Gaming for YouTube, Ryan ‘Fwiz’ Wyatt shared further insight into their plans for in-game drop integration in an interview with Wired on January 24. 

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Wyatt stated that embedding the feature for CDL and OWL streams is “very much on our roadmap,” but failed to divulge any information relating to when fans can start to claim their exclusive rewards.

Players have previously been able to redeem rewards for watching the Game Jam Hollywood premiere exclusively on YouTube. 

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This came after Epic Games partnered with Google’s video-sharing platform to “level up” the viewing experience. 

While only time will tell how the Activision and YouTube partnership will fare, it appears to be in safe hands with both Pete Vlastelica and Ryan Wyatt at the helm.