There's actually been academic research papers written about spectating Starcraft: http://jeffhuang.com/Final_StarcraftSpectator_CHI11.pdf http://jeffhuang.com/

There's actually been academic research papers written about spectating Starcraft: http://jeffhuang.com/Final_StarcraftSpectator_CHI11.pdf http://jeffhuang.com/Final_StarcraftSpectator_CHI11.pdf There's a number of types of people who watch Starcraft, and a number of things Starcraft does really well to get a large audience of viewers (hiding/showing certain game information).