Why Esports Copyright Is More Complex Than Sports | Esports World Cup Foundation (ECWF) X Amazon Explained

The Esports World Cup Foundation (ECWF) just announced a 3-year deal with Amazon Ads that will broadcast tournaments across Twitch, Prime Video, Alexa, and Wondery podcasts. Backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the EWCF faces a unique challenge: while this partnership promises to bring esports to millions of new fans, it also highlights the pertinent legal question of content ownership: how do you manage copyright when a single tournament involves dozens of different video games?

Why Esports Copyright Is Different from Traditional Sports

In esports, the companies that make the games, like Epic Games (Fortnite), Riot Games (League of Legends), or Valve (Counter-Strike), own the copyright to everything you see on screen. Copyright protects the specific creative expressions in a game—its unique art, sounds, code, and story. This means that unlike traditional sports, where the NBA can sell broadcast rights to ESPN without asking permission from James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, esports tournaments need licenses from each game publisher.

The Esports World Cup faces this Herculean challenge every tournament. With 25 tournaments across 24 games planned for 2025, they need separate agreements with each publisher. Running an esports tournament isn’t like traditional sports where leagues control the broadcast rights. The company that made the game and owns the copyright controls everything—whether you can stream it, where you can stream it, who can share clips, and how content can be monetized. Multiply that by 24 different games, 25 times in a calendar year, and you see the challenge the deal poses.

The Multi-Platform Dilemma

The Amazon partnership takes this complexity to another level by spreading content across all of Amazon’s connected platforms like live broadcasts on Twitch, an original docuseries on Prime Video, real-time voice integrations on Alexa, and immersive storytelling via Wondery. Each platform, thus creates unique copyright challenges:

• Twitch Streaming: This is the most straightforward, like traditional TV broadcasting but completely online. However, Twitch’s culture of clipping and sharing highlights means thousands of users might create and share copyrighted content. Who owns a 30-second clip of an amazing play? EWCF? The game publisher? The player who made the play? The person who clipped it? In practice, most clips exist because publishers tolerate them for marketing value. But legally, the game publisher holds the strongest claim and could shut down any clip that uses their intellectual property. That’s why Twitch has quick takedown systems—when rights overlap this much, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission..

• Prime Video Docu-Series: Documentaries add layers of complexity. Beyond game footage, they include interviews, music, and behind-the-scenes content. Each element needs separate permissions. Plus, there’s the editorial question: who controls the narrative? Critics have already noted that “the docuseries… serves as an additional vehicle for the Saudi Arabian government to engage in so-called ‘sports or esports washing,’” raising questions about how copyright control might influence storytelling.

• Alexa Updates: This is largely unresolved. When you ask Alexa for tournament updates, the system must deliver information without violating copyrights or trademarks. Can Alexa say “Team X defeated Y Clan in Counter-Strike” without permission? Probably, courts have generally held that factual information is not copyrightable, protecting news reporting. But can it play audio highlights from the match? Unlike text-based summaries, audio clips contain copyrighted elements like game sounds, broadcast commentary, and music, which would likely require licenses from multiple rights holders for commercial use on a platform like Alexa.

The Streamer’s Dilemma

One of esports’ biggest strengths is its community of content creators. That same community also creates esports’ biggest copyright challenges. Streamers and content creators are the lifeblood of esports, creating highlights, analysis and review videos, and watch parties that keep fans engaged between tournaments. But technically, most of this content exists in a legal gray area as outlined above.

The industry has seen what happens when rights clash. Take the famous “SpectateFaker” incident, where a Twitch channel broadcasted games featuring star player Faker, only to face takedown requests because another platform claimed exclusive rights to his content. This shows how multiple parties can claim ownership over the same gameplay.

The Amazon deal must balance several competing interests:

• The tournament’s rights to its broadcast
• Publishers’ rights to their games
• Players’ rights to their own gameplay and image
• The community’s tradition of creating and sharing content

But when there’s a record-breaking USD 70+ million prize pool and major advertising revenue at stake, tolerance for free marketing can quickly turn to enforcement.

Legal Claims Battle Royale

Traditional sports broadcasts have simple revenue models: the broadcaster pays the league, then makes money from ads and subscriptions. In esports, the money flow is more complex and disjointed due to all the intellectual property involved.

Publishers might demand a cut of advertising revenue from their games’ broadcasts. Teams may have separate sponsorship deals that conflict with tournament sponsors. Players might have personal streaming contracts that limit what content they can appear in. And platforms like Twitch have their own monetization systems that need to accommodate other parties’ interests.

The partnership aims to reach the United States, Europe, Brazil, Mexico, the Middle East and North Africa, Turkey, India, and Canada. But copyright law differs in each region. What is considered fair use in the US might be infringement in Germany. Content that’s legal to broadcast in Brazil might violate regulations in India. This means Amazon potentially needs different broadcasting strategies for different regions, adding to the legal considerations that need to be addressed.

Delivering The Future of the Esports World Cup

The Esports World Cup’s Amazon partnership is a pivotal case study for the future of esports broadcasting. If successful, it could establish a template for how major tournaments handle multi-platform distribution. If it fails, it might show the limits of trying to force esports into traditional broadcasting models.

The key challenge isn’t technical—it’s legal. As one legal expert notes, “the publisher can independently decide to limit the exploitation of their game in any field of exploitation.” This means success requires cooperation from dozens of companies with different interests, business models, and visions for their games.

Conclusion

The Amazon-Esports World Cup deal represents both the massive potential and inherent complexity of esports. While 2,000+ elite players and 150+ Clubs from over 100 countries compete for millions in prizes, lawyers and business executives will be playing their own game behind the scenes, navigating copyright laws, territorial rights, and revenue sharing agreements.

For fans, those legal maneuvers will be mostly be invisible—fans will enjoy even more ways to watch their favorite games and tournaments. But understanding these legal challenges will help explain why esports broadcasting seems fragmented, why certain content gets taken down, and why the industry is still figuring out the best business model to take advantage of the industry’s explosive growth.

The Esports World Cup’s ambitious multi-platform approach might just deliver the way forward—or reveal why traditional copyright models don’t quite fit the competitive gaming business.