As live sports games are canceled, pro athletes and teams turn to video game streaming as a means of connecting with fans and finding new sources of revenue
Ben Strauss / Washington Post : Tweets: @benjstrauss , @postsports , and @launcherwp Tweets: Ben Strauss / @benjstrauss : I talked to NBA dudes Meyers Leonard and Mario Hezonja about Call of Duty, streaming through the paused season and gaming's moment. Hezonja also explained the shock of learning about America's COVID-19 test shortage and deciding not to take one. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... @postsports : With the NBA season paused, a number of players have filled the void with streaming. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Launcher / @launcherwp : Even before the pandemic, streaming was a popular way for athletes to connect with fans. Now, it's becoming something more. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
When the NBA paused its season in March 2020, players like Meyers Leonard and Mario Hezonja didn't just go quiet — they picked up controllers. Ben Strauss's piece captures the moment athletes discovered Twitch and YouTube as a substitute stage: Leonard and Hezonja talk Call of Duty, streaming through the pause, and gaming's sudden mainstream moment with sports fans who suddenly had no games to watch.
The article sits at the start of a chain the related coverage traces forward: within months, bookmakers reported e-sports betting volumes rising as much as 40x as gamblers filled the same live-sports void, and by 2021 the pull of streaming had grown strong enough that [[a:966383|top esports pros were quitting competitive play to become full-time Twitch and YouTube influencers]], with organizations and publishers reallocating money toward them.
First-order effects
- Paused NBA players like Leonard and Hezonja gain an immediate, unmediated channel to fans — streaming Call of Duty from home keeps their personal brands warm while team paychecks and arena exposure are frozen.
- Streaming platforms inherit a captive sports audience overnight, converting idle NBA viewers into gaming viewers without spending on acquisition.
Second-order effects
- Bookmakers respond to the same void by building e-sports betting markets, a demand spike that gives leagues like the NBA — which already sell game data to odds providers — a new commercial surface once live play resumes.
- Esports organizations and game publishers face competition for talent from a new direction: pro athletes with built-in fanbases can out-draw career gamers, pressuring orgs to treat streamers as the product rather than tournament rosters.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the athlete-creator hybrid becomes a permanent league asset class — player contracts, media rights, and betting data deals converge around individuals' streaming audiences rather than broadcast schedules alone.
- The 2020 surge in gaming spend and attention that this moment kicked off is what the industry was still digesting a year later, when outlets were weighing whether the pandemic's gains were structural or borrowed.
The trend: Live sports disruption is accelerating the merger of athlete fandom with game-streaming economics, turning players into platform-native creators whose audiences persist beyond the season.