With the start of the 2021 season last month, a number of prominent streamers -- most notably recently-retired pros Niclas "Pengu" Mouritzen and Troy "Canadian" Jaroslawski -- had announced that they had been given permission to co-stream the upcoming NA and EU League matches.
This meant they would be watching the games on their own stream in what is in effect a massive watch party. This gets the streamer's viewers to watch the games as well and acts as an additional advertisement avenue for the pro-tier games.
Despite its advantages and use in most other esports, Ubisoft then rescinded its permissions to co-stream games just ahead of the league's start. This is possibly due to the new Twitch drops that were announced, which, for the first time this season, drop exclusive items during the online season.
Nevertheless, a number of big streamers representing the top organisations in the Brasileirão league have each been covering the games regardless in an alternative way to "co-stream", by running "reaction streams" instead.
This sees the streamer broadcast their face-cam which, when watched as part of a Twitch multi-stream, works similar to a co-stream:
A screenshot of gohaN's multistream while watching March 28th BR6 stream.
This has been well-utilised by streamers, such as Team Liquid's RazaH, FaZe Clan's Patife, INTZ's gohaN, MIBR streamer Hit, and Ninjas in Pyjamas' yuuK.
Out of these names, RazaH has taken it one step further by replacing the dead space on his stream with a behind-the-scenes stream of the Team Liquid players in their gaming room.
The Atheris streamers of Eloonn and BRAVE also covered the Mexican Championship with the same setup, as seen here.
A screenshot of RazaH's multistream while watching April 3rd's BR6 stream.
This creates an amazing experience for a Liquid fan; even greater than that of a standard co-stream. As well as watching the pro games and streamer, the fan can now have an added aspect in the form of the team-camera and, unlike in co-streams, can switch the audio between just the streamer, just the game, or a mix.
In total, this adds up to be a way to completely bypass Ubisoft's lack of co-streaming permissions, as these streamers are technically only streaming their face-cams and are thus not breaking any rules.
In the past DarkZero previously streamed their bullpen during their NA League games to a pretty welcome reception, meaning that they could once again take advantage of this once again if they so wish.
With notable streamers such as MacieJay, Get_Flanked, TuxBird, z1ronic, Pengu, and Canadian almost all representing NA and EU League organisations, this could act as yet another boost to the league's view numbers to further break viewership records.
The Na'Vi streamer of z1ronic
The LATAM streamers will thus continue to draw in viewers to the BR6 League this way for the rest of the season, until official co-streaming permissions are hopefully given in the future.
Hopefully, before then, we will also see these massive EU, NA, and APAC streamers take advantage of this workaround, further helping to bring viewers to the games.