Fansided

ELEAGUE opening week saw millions of viewers

By Daniel George

May 26, 2016; Atlanta, GA, USA; Slemmy and team Cloud9 during day three of ELEAGUE play at Turner Studio. Mandatory Credit: John Nowak/Turner Sports via USA TODAY Sports
May 26, 2016; Atlanta, GA, USA; Slemmy and team Cloud9 during day three of ELEAGUE play at Turner Studio. Mandatory Credit: John Nowak/Turner Sports via USA TODAY Sports /
facebooktwitterreddit

4.3 million video streams were launched to watch ELEAGUE competition in Week 1, with a fair number of viewers coming from TBS.

If there’s any indication that TBS’ venture into broadcasting eSports was going to be a success, it’s certainly within the online presence. Turner Sports has issued a press release, indicating that more than 150 million gross minutes of ELEAGUE Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competition was consumed in just the opening week.

The majority of the week’s competition had been aired on the ELEAGUE Twitch channel, as teams from Group A (Luminosity, Cloud9, Renegades, Liquid) plays upward of eleven matches and hundreds of rounds throughout tournament play last week. This resulted in 4.3 million unique video streams, a peak of 92,000 concurrent streams, and an average of 50,000 concurrent viewers.

Social media was blowing up about ELEAGUE too, with more than 710 million impressions on Twitter; 360 million of them came from Group A Finals alone. 27 million impressions came from all ELEAGUE social accounts, while ELEAGUE videos posted on Facebook drew in 3.6 million views.

For the TBS broadcast, however, viewership might need a bit of improvement. An average of 509,000 viewers tuned in to see Cloud9 face off against Luminosity last Friday, which might sound like a fair number of viewers for eSports on a Friday night at 10 PM ET. However, when you consider that The Big Bang Theory ran two re-runs on TBS the previous week and averaged a lot higher viewership, TBS might be hesitant about their early standing.

They should note that, compared to other broadcasts of eSports competition, ELEAGUE has been doing fairly well. “Heroes of the Dorm,” which aired Heroes of the Storm play on ESPN 2 last year, debuted to just 96,000 viewers. And that was for the Finals! Throw in the fact that the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Toronto Raptors played an Eastern Conference Finals elimination game that same night, and the ELEAGUE numbers don’t look so bad.

ELEAGUE Week 2 action has already begun, with teams G2 Esports, Optic, NiP and Selfless determining rankings for the Group B playoffs.

For more Gaming coverage, visit our Gaming hub page.

Home/Entertainment