AMC has just announced that it’ll be partnering with Twitch and some of its most-viewed streamers to hold a Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds tournament which will promote and lead viewers to the season 8 finale of their own show, The Walking Dead.
PUBG has been around for a while now, it was the game that started the “Battle Royale craze”. It used to be red hot a few months ago, but its position as the most popular online game was quickly taken over by Fortnite. However, the game is still played by millions of people around the world and has since made its way to multiple platforms, including smartphones. The game is still highly popular and many YouTubers and streamers play it daily.
Although it’s not at peak popularity as it once was, PUBG has started to make headlines again as it looks to fight back against Fortnite. As mentioned before, it’s still played and viewed by a lot of people and the number of people playing the game is also exponentially increasing thanks to its most recent release on smartphones. AMC looks to use this popularity in order to promote the season finale of their show this weekend.
The tournament will feature two teams of four members each comprised entirely of different Twitch streamers. One team will be representing the spinoff series from The Walking Dead, Fear The Walking Dead. The other team will simply represent the original show itself. Of course, keeping in theme with the show, the game mode for the tournament will be PUBG’s zombie mode.
The Twitch streamers taking part in this tournament are Sacriel, ChocoTaco, Anthony_Kongphan, iiJERiiCHOii, VernNotice, GoldGlove, JoshOG and Fairlight_Excalibur. The tournament itself will be called “Survival Sunday’s Battlegrounds,” and it’ll run for around three to four hours, leading up to the premiere of the season finale of The Walking Dead and the premiere of Fear The Walking Dead’s season four.
The tournament will keep viewers engaged too and they can actually take part by playing members of a zombie horde. They can also use specific Walking Dead themed emotes to cheer on the teams taking part in the tournament, it’s a unique way to keep the viewers engaged. The tournament itself will be used by AMC to show trailers for the upcoming episodes of both of its shows. The tournament seems to be entirely focused on promoting The Walking Dead and its spinoff, so it’s safe to say viewers won’t be getting new PUBG information during this stream.
There will be commentary too which will be provided by Dead_flip, another streamer, and Scott “Coltrane” Cole, who is known for casting esports on ESPN.
“The overlap between the Twitch/PUBG gaming audience and The Walking Dead Universe is incredible,” Justin Manfredi, the senior vice president of marketing at AMC Networks, said. “The detailed and authentic integration of show elements into the gameplay and emotes make for both fun and engaging moments for fans of both properties. It’s a win-win.”
Indeed, it’s a win-win. Both parties have a different set of viewers and it helps both platforms gain more exposure. PUBG needs more people to get it back to the top whereas AMC can use PUBG’s immense popularity in order to break a viewership record for its upcoming episodes. Moreover, they’re keeping their viewers engaged instead of just showing two teams duke it out for a few hours on some video game, which makes things even better.
The tournament will begin on Sunday, April 15 at 4 pm ET and is expected to go till 8 pm ET. The tournament will be featured at the top spot on Twitch’s homepage for its entire duration and just 1 hour after the tournament has ended, at 9 pm ET, the finale for The Walking Dead’s season 8 will air which will be followed by Fear The Walking Dead’s season 4 premiere at 10 pm.