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The first week of action for the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds 2019) provided the title a surge in viewership that helped it reach almost 20M hours watched.
Meanwhile, numerous influencer-reliant titles struggled to keep up, posting fewer than 10M hours watched.
After generating more than 10M hours watched for most of the spring and summer, Grand Theft Auto V and Fortnite both had less than 9M.
The following content is ranked according to the total number of hours watched on Twitch from Monday to the following Sunday, with data compiled using TEO Access.
League of Its Own
League of Legends’ month-long World Championship tournament opened up competition last week, and the resulting viewership for LoL was the highest the game has seen since the middle of May.
With a second play-in round and the group stage set to begin this coming week, one could expect that this boost to viewership for LoL will only be intensified in the coming weeks as teams from across the world give the game’s premier yearly tournament international appeal.
Don’t Call it a Comeback?
Apex Legends made waves on Twitch in February when it came out, but since then viewership for EA’s battle royale has been less than spectacular. Following the release of new content in Fortnite, Apex Legends struggled to regain the interest of influencers on Twitch and its viewership declined.
Now that EA has begun to generate more content for Apex Legends, the company made an effort to stimulate the marketplace for streaming its battle royale by paying numerous influencers to stream the launch of its new in-game “season.”
Though the promotional content by streamers served to boost Apex Legends viewership in the short term, its viewership has since declined again. However, so far, the title has maintained at least 500K hours watched per day since the content release on Oct. 1. That figure marks an improvement from the weeks before when the game was averaging 250K hours watched or less per day.
Waiting Game
World of Warcraft saw its best viewership ever on Twitch following the release of Classic at the end of August, but that has declined steadily as more players have gotten around to completing much of its end-game content.
Some influencers, like Zack “Asmongold” (last name unknown), have continually served to stimulate viewership for Classic with community-driven activities, but with many streamers taking a break during TwitchCon, viewership saw a dip below 10M hours watched two weeks ago.
Despite many influencers returning to their regular streaming schedule, World of Warcraft was still below 10M hours watched this past week, with yet another decline in viewership. Based on this trend, it is likely that we could see WoW viewership continue to slide until new content comes out, unless a few upcoming large community-run dueling events cause an unexpected influx in viewers.
