Contenders viewership and Spectating

EDIT: i think people dont realise how intereting and important number of viewers for contenders is when you compare them to owc, ill disscuss why in later post

There already is a thread complaining about low viewership and here ill try to provide viewership numbers and explenation for them.(my explenation)

Few things about contenders to put viewership in perspective
Contenders even though is blizzard event and could be compared to owc is in much worse spot, it is not advertised or even mentioned anywhere on the site, game launcher or game, another important thing is not many well known comunity members talk about it (stylosa might mention it on twitter but thats not much) and unlike owc it wasnt announced long in advance. And thus viewers for this tournament are mostly peoiple realy interested in esport overwatch scene. Contenders is not lan and for its not really clear what this tournament actualy means and in general its place is not clear (supported by blizzard but so far no conection to owl, it might show which teams are strongest in eu and na but not on lan and not combined, it will not be a fight for the tittle of the best team in the world and its gona be a very long tournament)
Because of this reasons its much better to compare contenders to monthly melee while still giving endge in popularity to melee because it was a tournament that happened every month and a lot more people could have learned about it during these months.
And with this ill reminde you that last few monthly mm reached over 40k viewers and had 20k at avg

Misfits vs. Cloud 9
Game begun with 10k viewers and throught the game number of viewers kept slowly climbing to 15k at the end (2k more on french and russian streams combined).
my explenation
1st game so number of viewers started low but then kept climbing (there are exceptions from 1st game beeing less popular for example game with team korea in owc) and while misfits used to be popular team long bad period shaked their fanbase. Other reason for not that big popularity is the fact that eu overwatch in general is less popular then na.

eUnited vs. Team Gigantti
1st WTF HAPPENED!!! lh losing to mvp? eunited losing to gigantti? at least last map looked decent i just hope its just because of owc going on and eunited comes back strong next week
Started where previous game left with 15k viewers. During the first half viewership didnt grow (english that is, russian stream was hovering around 1.3k compared to 1k during game 1) 2nd half droped a little bit to 14k and with this much eu matches ended
my explenation
Same as for previous match, i think during match between eunited and misfits viewership should be higher and it might (just might) grew as the season progresses

there was youtube stream but it had around 20-30 viewers so i ignored it

I feel like observing was much better then during owc, specialy then during usa qualifier few things i noticed that i think were good compared to owc:
-during big team fights with a lot of ults used we see side view its helps you see much easier which team is winning, in owc observer a lot of times is on one of dps heros ulting for example genji and this perspective is just hard to follow and you dont really know which team is actualy winning this fight
-much more flexible observing, during owc for example during payload maps attacking team was spectating nearly exclusivly and here we saw a lot more povs on fights, also camera wasnt stuck on one player for even minutes like in na qualifier

Observing is very good here. But there are production issues that I hope they fix.

Observing for the most part was good but was bants when a team got whiped and the spectator view just shifted from corpse to corpse.

Kiwifruit [#4]

Observing for the most part was good but was bants when a team got whiped and the spectator view just shifted from corpse to corpse.

during na qualifier i remamber one time on numbani camera was on pharra for nearly 2 minutes and after she died stayed on her for nearly 5 secends so at least they are switching :P

few links for perspective:
take over 2 lan viewership: https://esc.watch/tournaments/ow/overwatch-takeover-2
apex season 3 (look at twitch peak) https://esc.watch/tournaments/ow/ogn-overwatch-apex-season-3
beat invitational (an online tournament for top na teams no envy): https://esc.watch/tournaments/ow/beat-invitational-season-2

EnVyUs vs. Immortals
Begun with 15k viewers and climbed to 17k after map one and 19k after secend map and got to 20k (only for little bit thought) during half time. Even french and russian stream got a lot more viewers 1.3k and 1.2k respectivly during half time. Secend half started little bit lower with 18k viewers but soon grew again to 19k-20k and had around this much for the rest of the game
peak of viewers on streams was at 20k for english 1.6k for russian and 1.3k for french
my explenation
As i said earlier NA overwatch is just more popular then eu and thanks to envyus beeing prodably best known overwatch team in the west

Rogue vs. EnVision eSport
After previous match ended viewership droped significantly and during first map it was at 15k (plus 1.2k on both russian and french streams) and then grew to 17k on english 2.6k on french and 1.5k viewers on russian stream. in 2nd half it droped a little bit to 16k and 2.7k on english and french streams respectivly
overall viewership peaked at 17k for english stream 3k for french stream and 1.5k on russian stream
my explenation
number of viewers droped from the previous game because there was no envyus but the french stream got quite a lot of viewers because of "frogue"

Sounds like the average number of viewers throughout the day stayed relatively consistently over 15k. I think that's pretty good for the first day, though I'm not sure tomorrow's numbers will be able to keep up given the relative lack of big names but you never know.

Given today's results we might end up seeing more people be interested in more matches since the expected stomps didn't happen and we even got some upsets.

KuroiRyuu9625 [#8]

Sounds like the average number of viewers throughout the day stayed relatively consistently over 15k. I think that's pretty good for the first day, though I'm not sure tomorrow's numbers will be able to keep up given the relative lack of big names but you never know.

Given today's results we might end up seeing more people be interested in more matches since the expected stomps didn't happen and we even got some upsets.

i would say closer to 14k eu and 16k na
i think tomorrow will have far less viewers (my guess would be 12k avg with peaks at 15k-17k)
btw im working on little read about these numbers and owc right now ;)

Comparing owc and conteders viewership

I will start by reminding that contenders is a tournament organized by blizzard just like owc, both have great production value and even share casters and analists but there are few important differences between them that result in such a big difference in viewership.

First and most important reason is exposure, contenders even though it's organized by blizzard is nowhere to be found on their site or whats more important in the blizzard app contrary to owc which was advertised in both long before it begun and it requaiered for the community to take part in (not directly) choosing teams. I think that what was most important is how long before owc actualy took place it got advertised, because it was advertised everywhere for so long even people that might have not been interested originaly decided to watch. Expousure is in my opinion also a reason why last editions of monthly melee brought more viewers then this tournament (easily over 20k on avg and over 30k at times) even with much lower production values, thanks to the fact that mm took place every month for such a long time people could learn about it.

The secend big reason and one that starts to convince me that blizzard might be onto something with trying to lock teams in citys and make these communitys invested in "their" team. Because comunity got invested in owc and the biggest comunitys had their national team to root for and it created much bigger interest, and people wanted see "their team" play no matter what the score ended up beeing. It might have also convinced people not interested in esport to watch owc just to root for their national team.

Third reason is very consistant amongst all esports and that is "big events" owc qualifiers even though they have a lot of games are packed into 3 days with clear winners at the end. I think people are more likely to take time to watch tournament that starts and ends in 3 days with clear winners rather then, what contenders actually is, an online league which takes place throughout several months. A lot of people are gona skip most games and tune only into the ones their interested in and only people who will watch it weekly are harcore fans of esport and there are not that many of them.

There are obviously other reasons like the fact that owc is a place where we can see different regions compete against each other and that its a lan but the first 2 are in my opinion the most important with 3rd beeing little bit less important reason, fur such a high number of viewers during owc comapared to contenders.

(im not talented writter so sorry)

not the usuall source but chart for todays contenders main stream: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHoXLgfXYAAj_fz.jpg:large
and i think i never said it but im rounding my numbers up and down depending on how close to full number they are

remiska [#11]

not the usuall source but chart for todays contenders main stream: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHoXLgfXYAAj_fz.jpg:large
and i think i never said it but im rounding my numbers up and down depending on how close to full number they are

borked link

EDIT: nvm fixed lol

hugo [#12]

borked link

EDIT: nvm fixed lol

yea i noticed link was wrong ;)

You just make me remember AMM, a great monthly tournament that regularly pulls 30k viewers. Blizzard killed it, and a big trunk of those viewer go watch something else other than competitive.

bamboothief [#14]

You just make me remember AMM, a great monthly tournament that regularly pulls 30k viewers. Blizzard killed it, and a big trunk of those viewer go watch something else other than competitive.

rip melee (i was really pissed when blizzard killed it)

I think casters play a role (albeit small) in viewership as well.
No DoA and Monte, no Uber and JKap, no ZP and Hex. Bren did a great job but he's not known much to the casual viewer base who are more used to seeing ZP with Hex and Uber I think. And even though I kinda liked GB on the OWWC desk, him and X were meh to me tbh, missed many plays, they hype for big plays was not really there, didn't get me hooked up.

Involv3r [#16]

I think casters play a role (albeit small) in viewership as well.
No DoA and Monte, no Uber and JKap, no ZP and Hex. Bren did a great job but he's not known much to the casual viewer base who are more used to seeing ZP with Hex and Uber I think. And even though I kinda liked GB on the OWWC desk, him and X were meh to me tbh, missed many plays, they hype for big plays was not really there, didn't get me hooked up.

zp was there and honestly i think that even if that had some impact on viewership, it was negligible
the game with worse caster due (envyus vs immortals) got the most viewers

Yeah but GB and mr x were honestly antihype

Remiska grinding it out!
Thanks so much for these, its interesting to see all the numbers in one place, and what factors could've contributed to said numbers.

One more thing then.
Things that are not known before games like casters or result, most people are not interested in scene enaugh to be able to predict them, how interesting game is or how good spectating (production) is have very small impact on viewership because most viewers are not interested in these things to know or care about it, and what they most likely know is which teams are gona play and they decide to watch games based on this. (I know it's written terrible but im on the phone so sorry)

do casters have their own feeds or are they casting off of the same footage the viewers see?

ELektrikBill [#21]

do casters have their own feeds or are they casting off of the same footage the viewers see?

i have no idea but as far as i know it depends
some give casters few screens with different povs and their casting from this while spectators decide what viewers see seperately
in small tournaments caster IS a spectator so they see the same thing
again i never took part in any even rometly significant tournament production (i did some very small things in wot) so i dont know
if someone has better insight id be happy to hear (sideshow?)

one more very interesting thing, stats for contenders season 0 group stage, but ill reminde that 2nd day of streams was also last day of season 0 group stage so that was prodably a reason behinde higher numbers on day 2. We can also see again that no matter how good teams actualy are in each region na gets more viewers then eu
NA
day 1: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCqeRlnW0AACf0y.jpg
day 2: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDOvNslXsAAHFRi.jpg
EU
day 1: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCkCS-IXYAITXEl.jpg:large
day 2: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDID7QGXgAAk1SY.jpg

My prediction seems to have been optimistic
123 vs. Team Singularity
Begun with 6k viewers kept growing and stabilized at little bit over 10k

Bazooka Puppiez vs. GamersOrigin
Was pretty stable with between 10k-11k close to the end it menaged to break 12k

i predicted 12k avg (but for the whole day so im not yet completly wrong!) but it looks like i underestimated how much more popular teams that played yesterday are and impact of the first day, still i think na is gona be at over 12k at avg and break 15k (maybe 17k?) during faze vs fnrgfe match

Yeah, I was thinking the EU matches were probably going to be around 10k ish because the teams playing didn't have that much hype but maybe the upsets from yesterday gave them a small boost of a couple thousand more peeps, specially for that GO vs BP match.

I'm thinking we might be able to hit 15k with the RNG vs KUN and FaZe vs FNRGFE matches but we'll see shortly.

dragon strike colour still not in the teams colour :/ comone blizzard this should be fixed in few days and it still isnt after months
https://clips.twitch.tv/SpinelessSuperAyeayeDxAbomb (red dragon kills red team)

remiska [#26]

dragon strike colour still not in the teams colour :/ comone blizzard this should be fixed in few days and it still isnt after months
https://clips.twitch.tv/SpinelessSuperAyeayeDxAbomb (red dragon kills red team)

The issue is that it's not based on team color but the perspective of friendly/opponent skills based on who's being observed and what ever defaults they have. They did mention work being done for observing but I don't remember specifics on situations like these.

And yes, it;s been a while, yes it should have been fixed earlier, but no, it doesn't take a few days to develop, test and implement. Hopefully it gets deployed sooner rather than later but it's not their biggest issue at the moment imo.

KuroiRyuu9625 [#27]

The issue is that it's not based on team color but the perspective of friendly/opponent skills based on who's being observed and what ever defaults they have. They did mention work being done for observing but I don't remember specifics on situations like these.

And yes, it;s been a while, yes it should have been fixed earlier, but no, it doesn't take a few days to develop, test and implement. Hopefully it gets deployed sooner rather than later but it's not their biggest issue at the moment imo.

The issue is that it's not based on team color but the perspective of friendly/opponent skills based on who's being observed and what ever defaults they have.

hats exactly what i said

dragon strike colour still not in the teams colour

and nope fixing colours could be done in few days (locking teams colours took them decent time and that was much harder to do)

remiska [#28]

The issue is that it's not based on team color but the perspective of friendly/opponent skills based on who's being observed and what ever defaults they have.

hats exactly what i said

dragon strike colour still not in the teams colour

and nope fixing colours could be done in few days (locking teams colours took them decent time and that was much harder to do)

I'm not sure I understand. Developing the solution, applying the fix, internal integration/regression testing and finally PTR testing doesn't take a few days.

Granted it shouldn't take this long since I 100% agree and it could and should have been implemented by now but I think it's reaching for the low hanging fruit if we're not privy to their development cycles and planning.

Let me re-iterate, I fully agree that it's been a very very long time, but I don't understand the need to apply an arbitrary, and sometimes ridiculous, estimate of how long it should take them. As far as I'm concerned the developing the fix might very well only require one or two days worth of effort but the rest of the chain also needs to be taken into consideration.

Realistically when do you think they actually will bring the long awaited observing QoL changes? I'm thinking it needs, nay has to at least be before OWL. Now, having played Blizz games since D2: LoD, I wouldn't be surprised if they've been holding some of the smaller fixes back to consolidate into bigger ones.

KuroiRyuu9625 [#29]

I'm not sure I understand. Developing the solution, applying the fix, internal integration/regression testing and finally PTR testing doesn't take a few days.

Granted it shouldn't take this long since I 100% agree and it could and should have been implemented by now but I think it's reaching for the low hanging fruit if we're not privy to their development cycles and planning.

Let me re-iterate, I fully agree that it's been a very very long time, but I don't understand the need to apply an arbitrary, and sometimes ridiculous, estimate of how long it should take them. As far as I'm concerned the developing the fix might very well only require one or two days worth of effort but the rest of the chain also needs to be taken into consideration.

Realistically when do you think they actually will bring the long awaited observing QoL changes? I'm thinking it needs, nay has to at least be before OWL. Now, having played Blizz games since D2: LoD, I wouldn't be surprised if they've been holding some of the smaller fixes back to consolidate into bigger ones.

i hope (but im not sure its realistic) for the owc finalls but i think its more realistic that just before owl starts (end of this year) along with other things to improve spectating and esport "friendlines" to show how "well prepared and produced" owl is (even tho a lot of things they are gona implement then should have been implemented long ago)

Kungarna vs. Renegades
Had little bit over 13k through out whole match (peak not over 14k)

FaZe Clan vs. FNRGFE
Started with 13k and then kept climbing reaching over 15k viewers by the half time, during half time though it droped to 13k but again got over 15k viewers at the beggining of fourth map
edit little update just after the game ended (not stream) stream broke 16k

french stream was around 1k through out whole na part and russian little bit lower

Here chart:https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHtk988W0AAl5K5.jpg:large

Feel like Blizzard should advertise some significant/big tournaments like APEX, Contenders, etc in the game itself and maybe that wull boost the number of viewers but idk