For the past month, top Fortnite 
players across the globe have been competing in an attempt to qualify for this summer’s World Cup event that will bring with it a sizeable $30M prize pool.
While not every influencer involved in competing has managed to benefit from streaming their qualification attempts, top broadcasters like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Turner “Tfue” Tenney have leveraged the competition to generate heightened viewership on their Twitch channels.
However, with the release of a new in-game season, which brings along with it a fresh, heaping serving of content, Fortnite’s esports lost the spotlight on Twitch, coming up second to more influencer-driven content.
Related Article: Fortnite Uses Influencer-Driven Esports, In-Game Updates to Down Competitors on Twitch
Since the beginning of the World Cup qualification process in April, the most-watched Fortnite sessions on Twitch each week came from Blevins and Tenney during World Cup qualifying on Saturdays and Sundays, but this weekend, viewership for the title peaked earlier in the week.
Following the content drop on Thursday, May 9, Tenney and Blevins each posted their strongest broadcasting sessions of the week with nine-hour streams averaging 45K and 53K concurrent viewers, respectively.
For comparison, the most-watched esports-centric session of Fortnite during the week was from the official Fortnite channel on Sunday with an average of 42K CCV for a nearly 10-hour broadcast to conclude week five of World Cup qualifying.
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Overall, viewership for the Fortnite Twitch channel was up significantly from last week as the broadcast posted its most-watched weekend since qualifications began April 13. Sunday’s session was the best Fortnite’s official channel has had so far with 414K hours watched over 9.87 hours of airtime. Saturday was the most-watched semi-final day of action on the channel with 240K hours watched and an average of 25K CCV.
One potential explanation for the jump in viewership for the channel could be that Blevins and Tenney didn’t stream on Sunday. Tenney, who had already qualified for the solo event in the World Cup, took the weekend off from streaming, and Blevins was eliminated from this week’s qualifier on Saturday. With Fortnite’s top two streamers out, the pool of potential viewers for the official Fortnite channel was larger.
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Even with the boost though, viewership for Fortnite was strongest for the release of Season 9, not World Cup qualifying on Saturday and Sunday. That being said, Thursday’s content release by no means produced Fortnite’s most-watched day on Twitch in the past month.
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A pair of Sundays, April 21 and May 5, each produced stronger viewership for Fortnite as a title on Twitch, as World Cup qualifying took place with the game’s top influencers streaming their efforts. With the common element of these successful days for the top battle royale title on Twitch being a significant presence from top personalities, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the influence that top streamers possess surrounding Fortnite.
