Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
After posting strong growth on Twitch 
during the first quarter of the season, the Overwatch League has seen a second straight week of decline in year-over-year viewership on the platform for the first two weeks of Stage Two.
This weekend’s action produced 3.22M hours watched on Twitch across OWL’s main channel and top four alternate broadcasts. The number is down from last year when the main OWL channel, French-language broadcast, and Korean-language broadcast combined for 3.37M total hours watched.
The light drop in hours watched was paired with a more substantial drop in average concurrent viewers (CCV) to 103K, down from 137K CCV in 2018. The difference in average CCV and total hours watched year-over-year margins can be attributed to OWL’s expansion from 12 teams in the inaugural season to 20 this season.
The increased number of teams has led to more live airtime for the league that has to play more matches to fit all the season’s necessary matches into its schedule.
While the league again experienced a year-over-year decline, the numbers this weekend mark an improvement from last week when the average CCV saw a decline of 45K CCV and total hours watched dropped by around 500K year-over-year.
Overall viewership for the main OWL channel, including re-runs and peripheral coverage, hit 3.2M hours watched for the week averaging 41K CCV, that figure is also down slightly from last year when the channel produced 3.3M hours watched for the week with an average of 55K CCV.
Peak viewership has been down year-over-year for a second straight week, just like the other major viewership figures for Twitch. Peak viewership of 177K on the main Twitch channel last year was markedly higher than this year’s peak viewership of 115K CCV on Sunday. Sunday’s peak viewership came around the time that two expansion teams, the Washington Justice and Atlanta Reign, played a four-map contest that was won by the Reign.
Meanwhile, viewership on Sunday eclipsed 114K CCV again as the battle for Los Angeles saw the Gladiators
defeat the Valiant in a 2-1 affair. Another notable viewership peak came on Sunday when the Dallas Fuel downed the Paris Eternal 2-1 hitting 113.5K CCV. No other match during the day of matches managed to reach a peak that eclipsed 111K CCV.
While Twitch remains the primary platform for measuring viewership habits of the core Western esports audience, it does not represent the totality of Overwatch League viewership. Fans can watch action on OWL’s official website, Battle.net, and MLG. Additionally, matches are streamed in China on Zhanqi.tv, NetEase CC, Bilibili, and Huya, and Blizzard also has a deal to broadcast matches on Disney-owned platforms including ESPN, ABC, and Disney XD.
