Nuked Espn is set to air 12 hours of eSports coverage on April 5th. The network will turn to NBA 2K, Madden NFL 20, and rocket league tournaments to fill the void left behind by traditional sports leagues going on hiatus.
‘ESPN eSports day’ is a marathon of live events and taped eSports coverage that aired on ESPN2 over the last year. The marathon will begin with three hours of previous Madden NFL 20 content.
The F1 eSports virtual grand prix will follow with ESPN2 hosting the season 8 world championship grand finals. Espn2 will host the NBA 2K tournament, which brings 16 NBA players to participate in a 16-bracket event.
Esports has grown considerably over the last few years. The industry has seen a surge in interest in the past few weeks. Ceo Craig Levine previously said:’we’ve probably inadvertently benefited’.
F1 driver Lando Norris took part in a virtual, and shorter, version of the Australian grand prix using F1 2019. The race pulled in 70,000 concurrent viewers on Norris’ Twitch channel alone. Around 175,000 people watched the race.
Twitch is one of the main platforms for streaming. The platform went from 982 million hours watched in February to over 1.1 billion hours in March. That’s a 20 percent growth in viewership.
