Activision Blizzard is Putting Their Faith in eSports with Overwatch League

The mainstream nature of video games continues to grow, even today. One of the strongest developments as of late has been eSports. Major Studio/Publisher Activision Blizzard is going full force into it with the Overwatch League.

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick told CNBC about the company's excitement.

"It's a ways before you're going to see certain revenue streams, but we're already seeing a lot of traction and enthusiasm from fans"

The Overwatch League, as the name implies, is a competitive program of popular hero shooter, Overwatch. The first season will take place in 12 different cities separately at first, each to be broadcasted on various live stream programs, such as Twitch.

Kotick was asked whether Overwatch League is an effort to promote their games or a way to generate additional revenue, to which he replied that it was both.

"All of the commercial opportunities that exist in professional sports are opportunities that are available to us also, Plus you have virtual items. You have over-the-top advertising opportunities that wouldn't exist in traditional sports . . . We have the best in both worlds and we have an enormous fan base that we're satisfying."

Kotick was also asked whether or not they will begin accepting cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as payment. He expressed that they would like to support whatever payment forms that consumers have access to.

Activision Blizzard has had an incredibly successful year, with not just Overwatch's growth, but the growth of other competitive titles such as Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone. Stock for Activision Blizzard is up more than 77 percent in the last year.