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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 d

by 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.
ineptech 4y ago
LoL events get 100-200k streaming viewers because Riot pours money in to promoting them. SC2 tournaments look amateurish in comparison because they are self-sustaining, i.e. funded by the sponsors and viewers with no support from Blizzard. The question is not why SC2 doesn't get more viewers, it's why a 10+ year old game that barely even gets bugfixes can still support an industry of professional players and commentators. It's a matter of perspective. If the Superbowl struggled to sell tickets, but more people than ever were playing football in parks, would that mean the sport is dying or thriving? I think that's what this article almost managed to figure out: esports isn't failing, esports in a big arena with cheerleaders and fireworks is failing, while esports in the form of streamers cobbling together a decent paycheck from youtube+twitch+patreon is surprisingly popular.
- Kranar 4y ago
  LoL doesn't get 200k viewers, it gets 2-5 million viewers [1]. Blizzard officially sponsors the ESL Pro Tour and DreamHack SC2 Masters [2]. LoL is also older than SC2, it was released in 2009 whereas SC2 was released in 2010. I am not going to argue that esports is dead, I don't think it is. I will argue that SC2 is dead, just looking at Twitch right now, there are only 1.2k viewers for the game as a whole. As I write this post, there are three times more people watching a single woman doing nothing but eat Jello than the entirety of people watching Starcraft 2. [1] https://escharts.com/games/lol https://escharts.com/games/lol [2] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mtgs-esl-and-dreamhack-enters-three-year-agreement-with-blizzard-entertainment-300982675.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mtgs-esl-and-dreamh...
  - ineptech 4y ago
    How many people are watching American football on Twitch? Does that mean it's dead? You can't just pick one metric and decide that's the important one. LoL might be technically older than SC2, but surely you would agree that SC2's heyday came a long time before LoL's, yes? My point isn't to compare them and say one is better than the other, but to say that SC2 is further along than LoL on the same curve. In other word's, LoL's future probably isn't "bigger than soccer" nor "totally dead", it's "chugging along with a small steady player base and a few hundred people playing it professionally, but not filling arenas", which is where SC2 has been for 5+ years. edit: as for investment, I think Blizzard's "sponsorship" amounts to letting them use the logo. Certainly they're not paying for things like professional caster studios and advertising, like Riot does.
nickstinemates 4y ago
One data point: GSL tournament streamed a few days ago and posted on youtube has ~100k views. Personally, I sometimes catch some GSL broadcasts live or later on youtube, but SC2 outside of that context is basically dead to me. I haven't played ladder since the few months after the original release.
- Kranar 4y ago
  The most recent GSL videos on Youtube can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@afreecatvesports432/videos https://www.youtube.com/@afreecatvesports432/videos The average viewership is 20k, with a peak of 32k.
  - nickstinemates 4y ago
    Click on the "Live" tab.
KptMarchewa 4y ago
StarCraft 2 in Korea is pretty much dead, Brood War is between 1 and 2 orders of magnitude bigger.

by Kranar 4y ago

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.

ineptech 4y ago

LoL events get 100-200k streaming viewers because Riot pours money in to promoting them. SC2 tournaments look amateurish in comparison because they are self-sustaining, i.e. funded by the sponsors and viewers with no support from Blizzard. The question is not why SC2 doesn't get more viewers, it's why a 10+ year old game that barely even gets bugfixes can still support an industry of professional players and commentators. It's a matter of perspective. If the Superbowl struggled to sell tickets, but more people than ever were playing football in parks, would that mean the sport is dying or thriving? I think that's what this article almost managed to figure out: esports isn't failing, esports in a big arena with cheerleaders and fireworks is failing, while esports in the form of streamers cobbling together a decent paycheck from youtube+twitch+patreon is surprisingly popular.

Kranar 4y ago
LoL doesn't get 200k viewers, it gets 2-5 million viewers [1]. Blizzard officially sponsors the ESL Pro Tour and DreamHack SC2 Masters [2]. LoL is also older than SC2, it was released in 2009 whereas SC2 was released in 2010. I am not going to argue that esports is dead, I don't think it is. I will argue that SC2 is dead, just looking at Twitch right now, there are only 1.2k viewers for the game as a whole. As I write this post, there are three times more people watching a single woman doing nothing but eat Jello than the entirety of people watching Starcraft 2. [1] https://escharts.com/games/lol https://escharts.com/games/lol [2] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mtgs-esl-and-dreamhack-enters-three-year-agreement-with-blizzard-entertainment-300982675.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mtgs-esl-and-dreamh...
- ineptech 4y ago
  How many people are watching American football on Twitch? Does that mean it's dead? You can't just pick one metric and decide that's the important one. LoL might be technically older than SC2, but surely you would agree that SC2's heyday came a long time before LoL's, yes? My point isn't to compare them and say one is better than the other, but to say that SC2 is further along than LoL on the same curve. In other word's, LoL's future probably isn't "bigger than soccer" nor "totally dead", it's "chugging along with a small steady player base and a few hundred people playing it professionally, but not filling arenas", which is where SC2 has been for 5+ years. edit: as for investment, I think Blizzard's "sponsorship" amounts to letting them use the logo. Certainly they're not paying for things like professional caster studios and advertising, like Riot does.

nickstinemates 4y ago

One data point: GSL tournament streamed a few days ago and posted on youtube has ~100k views. Personally, I sometimes catch some GSL broadcasts live or later on youtube, but SC2 outside of that context is basically dead to me. I haven't played ladder since the few months after the original release.

Kranar 4y ago
The most recent GSL videos on Youtube can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@afreecatvesports432/videos https://www.youtube.com/@afreecatvesports432/videos The average viewership is 20k, with a peak of 32k.
- nickstinemates 4y ago
  Click on the "Live" tab.

KptMarchewa 4y ago

StarCraft 2 in Korea is pretty much dead, Brood War is between 1 and 2 orders of magnitude bigger.