Viacom18 is hiring staffs for a new division of gaming and e-sports that the company is looking forward to launching. The company has listed multiple jobs on LinkedIn and is looking to hire across marketing, sales, and operations for “a new business line to engage with the e-sports and gaming audience across TV, digital, and live events”. Voot, which is owned by Viacom, has streamed events like Dreamhack Mumbai 2018, with a mixed degree of success and with the new division of gaming and e-sports, the company might be intending to upscale its presence in that particular space or “engage with the e-sports/gaming audience in India”, as the job listing states.
According to the listing, this team will “conceptualize, develop and execute new on-ground properties, create clutter breaking esports and gaming content across Viacom18’s TV and digital platforms as well as develop new business partnerships in the esports/gaming ecosystem.”
This step from Viacom, however, might impact the company’s existing partnership with Ucypher–that brought reality TV e-sports to its MTV channel, or its dealing with SEL.
Notably, Reliance Jio has already made a push in the segment by hiring ex-Riot Games India boss Anurag Khurana and Viacom is following the footsteps.
Considering that new competitive mobile games like Clash Royale and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Mobile has a dedicated fan following in addition to e-sports fare like CounterStrike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2, Viacom could cater to a large audience with its gaming and e-sports division.
It could be expected that Viacom’s entry into this space might amplify the existing situation of e-sports and gaming in India as well as add its own leagues, talent, and tournaments backed up by its reach.
Sidharth Kedia, Head – Corporate Strategy, M&A, Data Sciences and Deputy Chief Commercial Officer for Viacom18 told Gadget360 at Dreamhack 2018 that Viacom is intending on adding chat and integrated gameplay to Voot by next year. The decision to do so is propelled by the early success of its e-sports streams featuring PUBG Mobile, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Dota 2. Apart from its general entertainment offerings, Voot has been focusing on showing e-sports in its entirety. Considering Twitch’s presence in India is mostly inactive, this could prove to be a lucrative step by Viacom.
“We’re going to bring features like chat, integrated gameplay, into Voot once we’re fully into e-sports,” said Kedia. “This is a POC [proof of concept] phase for three to six months. We’ve put a development plan in place whereby the end of 2019 we have all the essential components that are required for a platform to showcase e-sports in its true and entire form.”
Kedia told Gadget360 that the company is considering “whether non-e-sports users on Voot are even looking for a chat platform there” which should be good news for users who visit Voot to watch Pokemon and Voot Originals without the added interactivity.
Moreover, he also said that Voot is looking forward to putting its e-sports content behind a paywall.
“If we add a paywall in Voot, then we will evaluate whether e-sports as a category will also go behind the paywall,” he says.
As for the popularity of the game stream, “PUBG was maximum because it’s popular in India,” he says. “Dota 2 surprised us we got pretty good viewership. CS: GO what we expected we got. For us, proof of the pudding is to see how some of the India events do on Voot. So far other than PUBG the Dota 2 and CS: GO events were international events broadcasted in English in India. With that and with Dreamhack we’re confident that the Indian events we showcase are going to be fairly popular.”
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