The Ukrainian esports broadcasting studio Maincast was founded in the summer of 2018 by Vitaliy (v1lat) Volochay, Andriy Grigoriev, Oleksandr Smaglyuk, and Oleksiy Voronov. The company recently celebrated its sixth anniversary.

The studio’s development began with competition with such giants as RuHub and StarLadder. Nevertheless, Maincast gained popularity. The studio made a strong statement during The International (TI) qualifiers in 2018. By 2019, Maincast had become one of the most popular in the world, garnering 58% of views on Twitch during TI9. In 2020, Maincast signed an exclusive broadcasting contract with the holding company that owns ESL and Dream League, cementing its dominant position in the market until 2022.

New challenges

However, Maincast faced challenges when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Taking a pro-Ukrainian stance, the studio refuses to broadcast in Russian. This resulted in a wave of hate from Russian viewers, termination of contracts with Russian companies and loss of funding.

Despite this setback, Maincast has been helping civilians and the military, assisting citizens in leaving the occupation and participating in various charitable initiatives. During the war, the company has delivered more than 1,000 military vehicles to the frontline. Some gatherings were held in conjunction with UNITED24, and some featured well-known public figures to attract attention.

Maincast continues to operate in the Ukrainian-language segment. The channels broadcasting the matches in Ukrainian are breaking viewing records in their home markets. For example, the CS Major final in Copenhagen received 103,000 simultaneous views on Twitch and 47,000 simultaneous views on YouTube.