In 2020, Activision Blizzard decided to showcase its eSports exclusively on YouTube instead of Twitch. During the first weekend of the Overwatch League, almost a third of the viewers were missing compared to Twitch.
Here was the situation: For 2018 and 2019, Activision Blizzard had signed a deal with Twitch to showcase the Overwatch League games exclusively there. The Overwatch League was one of the biggest channels on Twitch during these years with the most viewer hours over the respective year.
But this exclusive deal with Twitch has now ended. Activision Blizzard announced at the end of January that they have signed a new exclusive deal with Google and thus YouTube Gaming.
Starting in 2020, all eSport events and leagues from Activision Blizzard will be broadcast exclusively on YouTube:
- including Hearthstone
- the new Call of Duty league
- the established Overwatch League, the prestige project in eSports from Activision Blizzard
Overwatch League loses about a third of viewers
This is how the first weekend on YouTube went: The Overwatch League started on Saturday, February 8. The US site Dotesports compared the numbers from the inaugural weekend of the Overwatch League 2020 on YouTube with those from 2019 on Twitch:
- In 2019, there were 63 hours of Overwatch over 4 days – 16 matches were played. Viewers watched 6.16 million hours on Twitch.
- In 2020, there were only 16 hours of Overwatch – only 8 matches were played. Just over 1 million hours were viewed.
Comparing the hours viewed is unfair because there was 4 times more Overwatch in 2019.
However, what can be compared is the average viewer count:
- 2019 had an average of 97,168 viewers on Twitch in the first weekend
- 2020 had only 63,505 viewers for the Overwatch League on YouTube
What is the reason for this? Dotesports notes that there was a strong drop in concurrent viewers when the action switched from New York to Dallas. Overwatch reportedly lost about 30,000 concurrent viewers here.
Many viewers apparently did not switch to a different broadcast, which may have significantly disrupted the viewing experience.
Another reason cited for the loss of viewers is that there were rewards for Overwatch players on Twitch when watching the eSports. YouTube lacks this reward. With the “tokens,” players could acquire special skins on Twitch.
The Overwatch League is particularly important for Blizzard this year. 2020 was actually intended to be the year when the league really takes off:
