In what seems a massive vote of confidence in the watchability of eSports for the mainstream, Riot Games and BAMTech have just announced a long-term partnership. For those unaware, BAMTech is a subsidiary of Major League Baseball’s media group, with the remit of commercialising partnered content and delivering it to viewers worldwide on new media platforms, like streaming. So it seems to be quite the big deal.

The new broke earlier on both the Wall Street Journal and Nasdaq with the details of the deal being laid out. BAMTech will pay a minimum of $300 million for the “exclusive” rights to stream and monetise League of Legend competitions through to 2023 – which suggests that they will no longer be broadcast on Twitch but the details of that aren’t clear yet. Riot’s co-founder Marc ‘Tryndamere’ Merrill has assured people on Reddit that the deal is not “platform exclusive” though, so it’s looking likely that Twitch will still play host to streams of future LoL competitions.

Riot are hoping to make use of BAMTech’s expertise in sponsorship and advertising for the benefit of League of Legends eSports competitions and the fans’ ability to watch and engage with the content. “We’ll… be collaborating to push the boundaries of the eSports viewing experience, elveraging BAMTech’s best-in-class technology to create additional possibilities and opportunities for fans to access, and connect with, League of Legends.”

Revenue beyond the $300 million will be shared by BAMTech with Riot when the mainstream company begins to make money out of the deal, although percentage shares are not known at this moment. It is a sign though that eSports are on their way to becoming something more widespread and a lot less ‘niche’ than they once were possibly.