With the Overwatch League, Blizzard’s gigantic eSports event has started. The first three matches of the first day have been played, and it seems the viewers are enjoying it – at least that’s what the numbers on Twitch say.
The Overwatch League is an event that Blizzard has been planning and preparing for a long time. In the specially built Blizzard Arena, 12 teams from the USA, China, South Korea, and the United Kingdom compete against each other.
In addition to fixed contracts, a prize pool of one million dollars awaits at the end of the League. A good reason for the players to give their all, which seems to please the viewers as well. The numbers on Twitch certainly support this.
Over 400,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch
The Overwatch League starts with high potential. Already on the first day of the event (January 11), over 400,000 viewers gathered concurrently, spread across the Twitch channel overwatchleague and the partner channels overwatchleague_kr and overwatchleague_fr.
On the main channel alone, up to 370,000 viewers were present at peak times. The number largely held steady, only dropping to about 270,000 viewers during the second match, Shanghai Dragons vs. Los Angeles Gladiators.
However, the last match of the round, Seoul Dynasty vs. Dallas Fuel, attracted a massive amount of fans again. At this time, over 64,000 viewers were simultaneously watching on the Korean channel.
The Matches in Detail
The various encounters of the first match day found varying degrees of acceptance across the channels. However, since the viewers of each language come from different time zones, this likely plays into the statistics (average viewer numbers):
San Francisco Shock vs. Los Angeles Valiant
- English stream: ~360,000 viewers
- Korean stream: ~18,000 viewers
- French stream: ~8,000 viewers
Shanghai Dragons vs. Los Angeles Gladiators
- English stream: ~275,000 viewers
- Korean stream: ~35,000 viewers
- French stream: ~3,500 viewers
Seoul Dynasty vs. Dallas Fuel
- English stream: ~350,000 viewers
- Korean stream: ~56,000 viewers
- French stream: ~3,800 viewers
While the numbers steadily grew on the Korean channel, they shrank on the French channel. In Korea, the games took place from morning until noon, while in France, they were held from 1 a.m. until early morning hours. There, the highest number of concurrent viewers was even recorded half an hour before the actual matches began. On the English stream, the views only dipped slightly during the second match.
The Fans’ Reaction to the Overwatch League
The Overwatch League not only encourages fans to watch, but also to discuss. This particularly affects North American players, where significantly more topics can be found in their forums than in the European ones.
The hero selection is particularly hotly debated. Besides mentions that Symmetra was the only hero not played, the current meta is a hot topic. Although many teams played a wide selection of heroes, the dive composition was among the most frequently played.
This is therefore mentioned several times in the forums. Many players advocate for a hero that can counter this meta, as well as for core heroes like Tracer and Genji to be weakened. Counterarguments are rare.
The remaining, rather sparse discussion is limited to the skins of the teams, their appearance and effects in the League, rewards for watching, and technical issues such as the monitors being used. There are hardly any contributions in the European forums. The few that exist question the costs of the skins in the game or ask about the favorite teams.
More information about the Overwatch League skins can be found in our article.
