2017 eSports TV Ratings: NBC's eSports Debut
Rocket League Universal Open On NBCSN (Photo: NBC Sports)
TNL Take: Earlier this week, Feature Writer Jordan Fragen had a detailed analysis of DisneyXD's whopping 60+ eSports and Gaming programming slate.
How's everyone else doing?
Two very interesting data points from the latest ratings.
TNL Infographic 060: eSports TV Ratings - NBC's Debut (Infographic: The Next Level)
NBCSN
By far the biggest eSports on TV story this past week was Rocket League's Grand Finals on NBC Sports Network on Sunday. Until the Grand Finals, the qualifiers were shown on various NBC Regional Networks like Philadelphia and Chicago [Note: I had 3 people call me from Chicago and couldn't believe what they were watching in the bar 👍🏽 ]
I'm a big fan of Rocket League and rooting for the game's future but the lowest rated live eSports program with 34,000 total viewers was surprising. What's even more surprising is that the repeat at midnight had almost double the viewership as the 9PM Live event.
But was it?
Here's what I wrote last month when Rocket League announced multiple different distribution partnerships:
The Next Level July 19, 2017 (Photo: The Next Level)
One of the biggest eSports weekend's was against Game Of Thrones new season.
This past weekend was the Game Of Thrones season finale.
If it's not obvious at this point, here's how you eSports TV ratings will do against Game Of Thrones.
Game Of Throne's Monstrous Ratings (Photo: HBO)
TBS/ELEAGUE
Turner continues it's partnership with publisher Valve by first starting with Counter-Strike and now showed DOTA2 and the run up to eSports largest prize pool, The International which hit ~$25M this year.
While those programs performed well - and even beat highly produced events like ELEAGUE's Major - there was 1 program that stood out.
The highest rated eSports program for ELEAGUE this year wasn't an actual event - but a 3 year old documentary on DOTA made by Valve.
Valve's "Free To Play" Documentary (Photo: Valve)
If a 3+ year old documentary that's been available on Netflix, YouTube and a host of other places performs that well and place that next to DisneyXD's content and you can start to see the need for what I've been talking and hoping for the past year:
Good. eSports. Shoulder. Content.
Many, many startups and companies are tackling this space and over the next year should see a slew of content released.