2017 eSports TV Ratings: Nintendo World Championship, The CW, ELEAGUE

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2017 ESPORTS TV RATINGS: NINTENDO WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, THE CW, ELEAGUE

2017 Nintendo World Championship on DisneyXD (Photo: Nintendo )

2017 Nintendo World Championship on DisneyXD (Photo: Nintendo )

TNL Take: This week continues the eSports on TV trend with several key stats:

  • DisneyXD broadcast the 2017 Nintendo World Championship for the first time and shows Nintendo's dedicated push into eSports in 2017 in addition to a great Sunday time slot of 5PM
  • Not including DisneyXD's 60+ eSports programs to date, the total on all other channels including ESPN, TBS and the NFL Network has now hit 50 - more than double that of 2016
  • The CW again benefitted by showcasing eSports during a key time slot - Tuesday Prime Time

[Due to the massive amount of programming, The Next Level will showcase the Top 25 in the weekly reports for easier viewing]

TNL Infographic 062: 2017 eSports TV Ratings (Infographic: The Next Level)

TNL Infographic 062: 2017 eSports TV Ratings (Infographic: The Next Level)

THE CW

Out of all the eSports programming over the past year, The CW has continually given the best programming time slots: Weekday Prime Time. Not including Candy Crush - please don't @ me - The CW again takes the #1 slot with their Chasing the Cup series, this time featuring Injustice 2. 

Does this showcase the popularity of Injustice 2 and the Fighting genre for this audience? Not necessarily as ESPNU showed the same game on a Wed at 1AM and drew the lowest audience of any eSports program with 11,000 viewers.

More than likely the high viewership is The CW's reach, coupled with a great time slot; vs. the actual title as evidenced by the #2 program around another new game H1Z1.

 

DISNEYXD

We've already covered DisneyXD's massive eSports programming but this past week was a special one: the 2017 Nintendo World Championship were broadcast for the first time on the channel. 

And it delivered.

TNL Infographic 063: DisneyXD's eSports TV Ratings and Nintendo World Championship (Infographic: The Next Level)

TNL Infographic 063: DisneyXD's eSports TV Ratings and Nintendo World Championship (Infographic: The Next Level)

Nintendo's family friendly games fits perfectly with DisneyXD's audience and it's not surprising that the 2017 World Championship would rank as #1 - what is surprising is that it drew 30%+ more viewership than the 2017 EVO Super Smash Bros. Finals which is the second ranked program.

Nintendo based games/events currently make up 6 of the top 7 ranked eSports programs on DisneyXD.

 

TBS

This week ELEAGUE had their Counter-Strike preview show before the start of the playoffs, which always perform well as it's just 1 hour vs. 3 hours.

The very interesting part is that this week, the Preview show was shown at 3AM and still garnered 300,000+ viewers. 

Pretty amazing considering the time slot and more data showing the audience appetite for eSports shoulder content.