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The latest League Worlds was gigantic and viewership peaked at 5.1 million. These big finals are the eSports equivalent to the Super Bowl, and a lot of people t

The latest League Worlds was gigantic and viewership peaked at 5.1 million. These big finals are the eSports equivalent to the Super Bowl, and a lot of people tune in even if they're not active players. My favorite moba is Heroes of the Storm but I still check out League Worlds and DotA2's The International, despite not playing either game. StarCraft 2 is a decade old and viewership is still pretty solid for big events. Brood Wars is two decades old and they still get thousands of viewers!

somehnacct3757 4y ago
eSport viewership numbers are untrustworthy because the games incentivize players to tune in with special in game rewards. Also for reference the last Superbowl was watched by 100M viewers.
- axus 4y ago
  Aren't the rewards cheap for the company? Advertising costs plus the artists salary?
- stryan 4y ago
  How much sports game viewership is just TV's with the game on for background chatter, or people watching the Superbowl for the half-time show? I think viewer rewards is something to take into consideration (I certainly used to idle in OWL twitch streams for free skins) but I think it's a bit disingenuous to claim all of them are untrustworthy.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    The difference is that people will be talking about football well after the game is over. There is SportsCenter, there are the blogs, the social media....all of these things matter to advertisers, perhaps even more than the base metric of how many were watching the live broadcast.
    - ptudan 4y ago
      There's definitely derivative media in eSports too. Replace SportsCenter with youtube and twitch channels, and the rest is the same
- jcranmer 4y ago
  > Also for reference the last Superbowl was watched by 100M viewers. Getting precise numbers for marquee sporting events is difficult, especially outside of the major US sports leagues, but the Super Bowl is on the shortlist for most-viewed single sporting event. Comparing only among US sports leagues, the Super Bowl has more viewers than the final game of the next several leagues combined--the next largest finals seems to have somewhere around 20M viewers. By contrast, the smallest of the "big" US sports leagues can only manage around 5 million viewers for its final games.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    At this point I don't think it's really "sports" event, I wouldn't be surprised if many people turn in just for it while not being interested for the rest of the year
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  Yes, I don't see anything wrong with that or why that might discount the viewership numbers. It is the equivalent of a giveaway during a presentation. The cost of in-game rewards is in most cases marginally zero in software.
  - somehnacct3757 4y ago
    The post is about the economics of eSports. One of the big revenue sources is advertisers. The viewership numbers are inflated with low value incentived users so that the gaming companies can misrepresent their true audience size and get more advertising revenue
    - lovehashbrowns 4y ago
      The problem with this take is that some of the advertisers in the esports scene like Intel and HyperX have been around for over a decade. I’d trust their marketing department /somewhat/ to also be taking engagement into account and not just viewer count. It’s not until super recently that other brands have been going into esports advertising. Those newer brands, sure I can see them being lured by high viewer counts. But as an example, you can see the sponsors list in this page for the World Cyber Games 2005 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Games_2005 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Games_2005 Samsung, Intel, Razer, etc.
Semaphor 4y ago
> and a lot of people tune in even if they're not active players. Do they? I played (completely casually) till 2013, and stopped watching after the 2014 championship. I didn’t understand it anymore. Too many new champions, meta changes that I didn’t keep up with. Patches that changed the behavior. I have a hard time seeing how inactive players keep being interested.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Sticky social networks. I grew up watching a lot of regular sports but also playing some games. Same deal, once I became busy and decided to stop keeping up with meta changes, champ changes, etc I stopped watching. But I had younger friends who had more time who kept hyping these events so I felt pressured to watch. Then their younger friends would hype up the events and watch. I also have some actual streamers in my friend group so they socially pressure me to watch as well. I've finally gotten old enough that most of my friends have largely stopped watching eSports for fun. Funny enough I still watch regular sports because the meta really doesn't change that much at all.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  I don't enjoy playing because of the toxic community/competitive nature of the game but I enjoy watching people compete.
Kranar 4y ago
Can you cite figures for SC2 viewership? I sometimes watch it but from what I've heard from announcers on Twitch, SC2 viewership outside of Korea is basically dead. The last SC2 event was last month, Dreamhack Atlanta and it only managed to get a peak viewership of 26k for the finale. The average viewership for SC2 was 15k. That's abysmal, it's not even on par with people who watch competitive hot dog eating. [1] https://escharts.com/tournaments/sc2/dh-sc2-masters-2022-atlanta https://escharts.com/tournaments/sc2/dh-sc2-masters-2022-atl...
- nosianu 4y ago
  Home Story Cup still was 5-10+k viewers for the last time very time I looked. Half that for other larger tournaments. I think it still is surprisingly solid, myself I watch only very infrequently these days. I'm reporting what I see in the channel counter. Since I'm still subscribed to some major SC2 channels I see the numbers even when I don't watch myself. Tp me this is far from "dead", but I don't care about tens of thousands of viewers and lots of commercial activity. Just look at what this kind of "success" did for soccer. Maybe a bit more would be better, mostly for the Korean casts by the Tastosis duo, which unfortunately disappeared from Twitch and one has to go and watch it deliberately. The other one I watch is Back2Warcraft (my only WCIII channel, so I name it directly instead of the game - but it's the biggest one anyway). 1k regularly, a few times that for the bigger events. Even the casters could not ignore the disaster that WC III Reforged was, and in quite a few ways still is.
  - Kranar 4y ago
    Fair enough but at least we can quantify what people mean by solid. I think for most people, viewership of 5-10k is absolutely abysmal, basically dead. You can get 5k people to watch almost anything, including people eating copious amounts of junk food.
  - all2 4y ago
    Might I recommend uThermal? He has a YouTube channel and his presentation is rather excellent. Watching his work makes me want to get back into SC2. --- edit - Not a competition with lots of people, but he has 10+ "X to grand master" videos where he runs absurd builds to see if he can make them work.

somehnacct3757 4y ago

eSport viewership numbers are untrustworthy because the games incentivize players to tune in with special in game rewards. Also for reference the last Superbowl was watched by 100M viewers.

axus 4y ago
Aren't the rewards cheap for the company? Advertising costs plus the artists salary?
stryan 4y ago
How much sports game viewership is just TV's with the game on for background chatter, or people watching the Superbowl for the half-time show? I think viewer rewards is something to take into consideration (I certainly used to idle in OWL twitch streams for free skins) but I think it's a bit disingenuous to claim all of them are untrustworthy.
- rchaud 4y ago
  The difference is that people will be talking about football well after the game is over. There is SportsCenter, there are the blogs, the social media....all of these things matter to advertisers, perhaps even more than the base metric of how many were watching the live broadcast.
  - ptudan 4y ago
    There's definitely derivative media in eSports too. Replace SportsCenter with youtube and twitch channels, and the rest is the same
jcranmer 4y ago
> Also for reference the last Superbowl was watched by 100M viewers. Getting precise numbers for marquee sporting events is difficult, especially outside of the major US sports leagues, but the Super Bowl is on the shortlist for most-viewed single sporting event. Comparing only among US sports leagues, the Super Bowl has more viewers than the final game of the next several leagues combined--the next largest finals seems to have somewhere around 20M viewers. By contrast, the smallest of the "big" US sports leagues can only manage around 5 million viewers for its final games.
- ilyt 4y ago
  At this point I don't think it's really "sports" event, I wouldn't be surprised if many people turn in just for it while not being interested for the rest of the year
darkwizard42 4y ago
Yes, I don't see anything wrong with that or why that might discount the viewership numbers. It is the equivalent of a giveaway during a presentation. The cost of in-game rewards is in most cases marginally zero in software.
- somehnacct3757 4y ago
  The post is about the economics of eSports. One of the big revenue sources is advertisers. The viewership numbers are inflated with low value incentived users so that the gaming companies can misrepresent their true audience size and get more advertising revenue
  - lovehashbrowns 4y ago
    The problem with this take is that some of the advertisers in the esports scene like Intel and HyperX have been around for over a decade. I’d trust their marketing department /somewhat/ to also be taking engagement into account and not just viewer count. It’s not until super recently that other brands have been going into esports advertising. Those newer brands, sure I can see them being lured by high viewer counts. But as an example, you can see the sponsors list in this page for the World Cyber Games 2005 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Games_2005 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Games_2005 Samsung, Intel, Razer, etc.

Semaphor 4y ago

> and a lot of people tune in even if they're not active players. Do they? I played (completely casually) till 2013, and stopped watching after the 2014 championship. I didn’t understand it anymore. Too many new champions, meta changes that I didn’t keep up with. Patches that changed the behavior. I have a hard time seeing how inactive players keep being interested.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Sticky social networks. I grew up watching a lot of regular sports but also playing some games. Same deal, once I became busy and decided to stop keeping up with meta changes, champ changes, etc I stopped watching. But I had younger friends who had more time who kept hyping these events so I felt pressured to watch. Then their younger friends would hype up the events and watch. I also have some actual streamers in my friend group so they socially pressure me to watch as well. I've finally gotten old enough that most of my friends have largely stopped watching eSports for fun. Funny enough I still watch regular sports because the meta really doesn't change that much at all.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
I don't enjoy playing because of the toxic community/competitive nature of the game but I enjoy watching people compete.

Kranar 4y ago

Can you cite figures for SC2 viewership? I sometimes watch it but from what I've heard from announcers on Twitch, SC2 viewership outside of Korea is basically dead. The last SC2 event was last month, Dreamhack Atlanta and it only managed to get a peak viewership of 26k for the finale. The average viewership for SC2 was 15k. That's abysmal, it's not even on par with people who watch competitive hot dog eating. [1] https://escharts.com/tournaments/sc2/dh-sc2-masters-2022-atlanta https://escharts.com/tournaments/sc2/dh-sc2-masters-2022-atl...

nosianu 4y ago
Home Story Cup still was 5-10+k viewers for the last time very time I looked. Half that for other larger tournaments. I think it still is surprisingly solid, myself I watch only very infrequently these days. I'm reporting what I see in the channel counter. Since I'm still subscribed to some major SC2 channels I see the numbers even when I don't watch myself. Tp me this is far from "dead", but I don't care about tens of thousands of viewers and lots of commercial activity. Just look at what this kind of "success" did for soccer. Maybe a bit more would be better, mostly for the Korean casts by the Tastosis duo, which unfortunately disappeared from Twitch and one has to go and watch it deliberately. The other one I watch is Back2Warcraft (my only WCIII channel, so I name it directly instead of the game - but it's the biggest one anyway). 1k regularly, a few times that for the bigger events. Even the casters could not ignore the disaster that WC III Reforged was, and in quite a few ways still is.
- Kranar 4y ago
  Fair enough but at least we can quantify what people mean by solid. I think for most people, viewership of 5-10k is absolutely abysmal, basically dead. You can get 5k people to watch almost anything, including people eating copious amounts of junk food.
- all2 4y ago
  Might I recommend uThermal? He has a YouTube channel and his presentation is rather excellent. Watching his work makes me want to get back into SC2. --- edit - Not a competition with lots of people, but he has 10+ "X to grand master" videos where he runs absurd builds to see if he can make them work.