ESPORTS TV RATINGS: DISNEY XD PULLS AHEAD WITH 28 PROGRAMS
eSports TV Ratings: Disney XD Pulls Ahead With 28 Programs (Photo: ESL)
TNL Take: To reiterate one of the main themes of eSports in 2017: the bifurcation and distribution of content across TV and Digital platforms.
By far the biggest increase in TV programming has come from the House of the Mouse: Disney
2017 DISNEY NETWORKS ESPORTS TV RATINGS
2017 Disney Networks eSports TV Ratings (Infographic: The Next Level)
DISNEY XD
After announcing a Gaming programming slate and partnership with ESL, DisneyXD has aired 28 eSports events/programs over the past month.
The Next Level feature writer Jordan Fragen will have an in depth look at Disney XD next week but a few quick points:
- DisneyXD as released by far the largest amount of eSports related content in a 1 month span
- The EVO Smash Brothers Finals repeat garnered 80% of the Live Finals viewership - 2 weeks later and with a 9:30PM Sunday time; that's pretty remarkable
- Interesting to see Disney "share" eSports between ESPN and DisneyXD and allows them to target different advertisers against the same content as the networks have different demographics
2017 ESPORTS TV RATINGS
2017 eSports TV Ratings (Infographic: The Next Level)
CBS
After debuting with a whopping 4M+ total viewers, Candy Crush has steadily dropped and is about half off its peak, averaging ~2.2M viewers over the past month.
Although Candy Crush has dropped significantly, this past Sunday's ratings doubled last year's 9PM comparison against Madam Secretary.
NBC
Rocket League was shown across a few different NBC regional networks (Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.) over the past few weeks and will have a further update once all events have completed.
Currently, eSports TV programming in 2017 has tripled 2016's total and we still have 4+ months left in the year.