TWITCH TOP 10 WEEK OF OCT 8TH:
LEAGUE OF LEGEND'S WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP DOMINATES
2017 League of Legends World Championship (Photo: Riot Games)
By Feature Writer Jordan Fragen
Welcome to The Next Level's newest series breaking down each week’s top Twitch content and diving deeper than just the surface level. Without further ado, let’s break down the most notable trends in this week’s data.
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Twitch Top 10 Week of Oct 8th: League of Legend's World Championship Dominates (Graphic: Waypoint)
League of Legends World Championship's Dominated the Weekend
TNL Take: Ah, Worlds, how we’ve missed you.
This was week 2 of the group stage, traditionally a very bad week for North American League of Legends fans. This year was no exception. In an absolute slaughter fest, North American teams went 2-9. Both TSM and Immortals were eliminated and Cloud9 managed to made it through only by the grace of SK Telecom and God himself, Faker.
Given that Worlds are taking place in China this year, it was aired at off peak times for the North American and European audiences. Notably most metrics were roughly the same when compared to Week 2 of groups in 2016.
Total Hours Watched increased by 6%, but Average Concurrent viewers fell by 9% and Peak Concurrent Viewers fell by 8%. Likely this is due to the time shift and some viewers electing not to stay up until 3AM watching teams from their home region fail to qualify.
Most importantly, total reach appears to have increased significantly. Last year during the same week, League was watched by roughly 2.5M unique users on Twitch. This year that number rose to a staggering 3.2M, an increase of +27%. Frankly that’s huge for Riot and it speaks to the game’s popularity overseas.
PUBG Dominates Hours Streamed, But Is Viewership Lagging Behind?
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds continues to be a success by almost every metric. Had Worlds not been this week, it likely would have taken the top spot in most categories.
It continues to be the most streamed game on Twitch, with over 37K hours broadcast in the last week. That’s over 4 years worth of content in 7 days.
However, every other category fell between 3 and 10% from last week but only time will tell if this will be a larger trend.
Stars of the Week: Middle-Earth: Shadow of War and The Evil Within 2
When it comes to variety streamers (personalities not known for a single game), recently released games are often popular picks. Last week, droves of viewers watched indie darling Cuphead.
This week, the spotlight was on Middle-Earth: Shadow of War and The Evil Within 2 which were released on the 10th and the 13th respectively. Likely these games will not reappear on this chart anytime soon.
However given that average viewers watched under 1.5 hours for both games, it appears that many were tuning in to see if these games were worth purchasing for themselves.