With the move from Twitch to YouTube this year, there was sure to be a change in viewership numbers for the Overwatch League in 2020. The OWL saw a decrease of quite 60 percent in its average viewership from the 2019 season, according to Esports Charts
Esports Charts said it didn’t take statistics from Chinese streaming platforms under consideration because there have been tons of difficulties in confirming the data’s legitimacy, but the remaining information available still points to a large decline.
The main point of comparison comes from the Grand Finals match for both seasons. The 2020 finals, during which the San Francisco Shock defeated the Seoul Dynasty, had a mean of 46,780 viewers watched, consistent with Esports Charts. That’s a 61.4-percent decrease in average viewers from the 2019 Grand Finals between the Shock and Vancouver Titans, which averaged 121,338 viewers.
Peak viewership also dropped significantly year-over-year. Esports Charts reported that 183,036 people stopped in at one point to observe the 2020 finals compared to 318,019 in 2019. In tandem with the viewership averages and peak dropping, the hours watched also fell quite 50 percent from nearly 76 million hours watched in 2019 to only under 26 million this year.
Only the Korean broadcast showed a rise, jumping 27 percent and making up a complete 11.7 percent of all OWL viewership. English stream accounted for nearly 80 percent of the entire broadcast hours watched.
Despite dominating the hours watched percentage, English broadcast also lost the foremost viewers overall, dropping 66 percent from last year. this is often likely thanks to a mixture of decreased airtime, the regions being split, and other things taking interest faraway from the league.
COVID-19 and therefore the ensuing pandemic caused its own share of issues for OWL, including the previously mentioned regional split and online play rather than offline events, which caused viewership to fluctuate heavily throughout the year.
Week one had a peak of 136,000 viewers and managed to take a seat at a mean peak of around 90,000 through week five, which is when quarantine began. From that time on, OWL only broke 70,000 peak viewership one other time during the regular season at around 78,000 in week 21.
But COVID wasn’t the sole factor that detracted hype and viewership from OWL. Things like multiple top players leaving to play other games like VALORANT, the move to YouTube, and therefore the potential decline in overall interest in Overwatch as an entire likely played an enormous think in the decline.
Activision’s other competitive league, the decision of Duty League, didn’t suffer from many of these problems despite also being a YouTube exclusive broadcast. Its grand finals concluded with the Dallas Empire taking a 5-1 victory over Atlanta FaZe, peaking at 331,558 viewers with a mean viewership of around 91,807.
The Overwatch League could recover in 2021 with some semblance of normality likely being re-established for the competition, but it’s unclear what Blizzard will do to adapt and improve its product.