The change in Activision Blizzard's broadcast platform for competitions was a bombshell at the beginning of the year. Switching from Twitch to Youtube Gaming has upset the viewers' habit. After several rather chaotic months of transition — that wasn't helped by the coronavirus crisis — it's time to look at the impact of this change.
The Overwatch League and the Call of Duty League are in the spotlight, but we must take into account several data before analysing the figures given by our colleague Richard Lewis.
The data used were published on Twitter, and comes from streamhatchet. They weren't officially provided by Activision Blizzard, and if official data are released at some point, we will update this article.
- Not all Activision Blizzard games are concerned. Hearthstone Esports isn't represented, nor World of Warcraft MDI.
- The tables shown don't indicate which data is used. While it can be assumed that they contain all of the broadcasts of the official international Youtube channels, no information is given in regard to the other broadcast channels.
- In Season 2, some Overwatch League matches were broadcast live on traditional channels such as ABC. It's unclear whether these viewership are also counted in these comparisons or not.
- In a Reddit post, Jon Spector announced record numbers of viewers in Asia now that there is a new schedule. No indication is given here on this point, and regarding the numbers it's quite possible that this data isn't counted.
- On streamhatchet's blog, there is also another graph that we will present to you later in the article. Streamhatchet shows the drop in views for the Overwatch League. However, they also indicate that it's impossible — due to the Youtube API — to collect VOD data, believing that they surely generate a significant additional audience for the OWL.
- The seasons are still in progress, so the 2020 figures are still subject to change — even if a return to the 2019 average is highly unlikely for the OWL.
- Finally, these data are based on the Average ConCurrent Viewership. This is the most interesting means of measurement in this context, since it makes it possible to know how many viewers are in front of the stream at any given time.
Some significant figures
The graphs above give us some first indications of the trends followed by the Overwatch League and the Call of Duty League since 2018, on Twitch and then Youtube.
Call of Duty
The Call of Duty World League — which became the Call of Duty League — didn't really suffer from the switch. On the contrary, if we look at its results without taking into account the Opens (equivalent to the Overwatch Contenders), the average number of spectators is even increasing significantly, almost doubling its viewership between 2019 and 2020, and approaching an average of 50,000 viewers.
Overwatch League
This is where the gap is most representative. On Twitch, the figures were good, despite a slight decrease for 2019 of around 3.9%. The Youtube channel had a catastrophic impact on the average number of viewers, dropping from over 100,000 to under 50,000 (-64%). That's more than half the average number of viewers throughout this new season.
More precise and focused only on Overwatch, this second graph allows you to see in more detail the drop in speed that the Overwatch League suffered when it arrived on Youtube Gaming. The figures are based only on the first five weeks, which saw the cancellation of the first homestands in Asia due to the global health crisis.
It's interesting to note that between Season 1 (Twitch 2018) and Season 3 (Youtube 2020) — and considering for the moment the first five weeks of broadcasting — the Overwatch League has lost an average of 51% of its audience.
Although these figures probably don't take into account all broadcasting platforms — particularly the Asian channels, which seem to have largely increased their audience for this third season — it shows a very negative evolution of the average number of spectators in the Overwatch League. We can assume that it's due to the change of platform.
We can't overlook the impact of the issues Activision Blizzard has experienced this year — the many departures of Nate Nanzer or MonteCristo for example. All of this revealed weaknesses in the firm's system, which then had to completely overhaul its league model with the arrival of COVID-19.
It isn't impossible that these numerous problems, whether or not related to the internal crisis within the staff, ended up disappointing the fans. The idea of a league closed to its fans has inevitably been turned upside down.
It's difficult to come to any real conclusion, given the lack of overall and official figures. What is more or less certain is that Blizzard has lost part of its Western audience and that it will have to win it back. To help with that, the future release of Overwatch 2 will need to be huge enough to bounce the game around and bring in new audiences.
Original content by Jean-Vincent "Durvil" Cannata.
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