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The conclusion of qualifications for the Fortnite 
World Cup last week helped the battle royale game hit 3.8M hours watched on Friday, the second most-watched day for Fortnite on Twitch in June.
While the total was enough to be among the top days for Fortnite on Twitch during the month, the figure fell into the middle of the pack in terms of viewership for other World Cup qualification weekends.
The process for qualification began on April 13, with qualifying taking place each weekend leading into June. Following week nine of qualifications, there was a break in action as numerous influencers and Fortnite personalities attended the Electronic Entertainment Expo to participate in the Fortnite celebrity pro-am event in Los Angeles.
As opposed to every other weekend of qualifying, this past week’s tenth and final qualification round was played on Thursday and Friday. The previous rounds were played on Saturday and Sunday.
While coverage of the qualification process on the official Fortnite Twitch channel didn’t receive notable viewership figures, streams by popular personalities such as Turner “Tfue” Tenney, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, and Nick “NickMercs” Kolcheff led the way for the game’s viewership.
Tenney, who previously qualified for the solo portion of the World Cup, streamed on both Thursday and Friday during the final duos qualifier, and both of his nine-plus hour long streams were the most-watched sessions of the weekend.
On Thursday, his stream averaged 56K concurrent viewers, accruing 504K hours watched. His 11-hour stream on Friday for the qualifier’s finals averaged 68K CCV, peaking at 158K, and racking up 750K hours watched.
On the other hand, Twitch’s most-watched streamer from 2018, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, only streamed during Thursday, averaging 41K CCV over a six-hour stream. Blevins did not stream on Friday despite making the finals for the qualifier, citing a bad cough as his reason for not broadcasting.
Neither Tenney nor Blevins qualified for the duos portion of the World Cup, and while Tenney will still be participating in the tournament next month for the solo competition, Blevins failed to qualify in any capacity.
Blevins isn’t the only high-profile player to miss the cut either. A slew of popular Fortnite players including Kolcheff, Dennis “Cloakzy” Lepore, Ali “Myth” Kabbani, and Ryan “Chap” Chaplo failed to qualify.
With the World Cup a month away and the field set, it could be detrimental to the hype of the event that so many notable players and personalities will not be participating in the tournament in a competitive capacity.
Additionally, it is still unknown what kind of viewership the offline, in-person tournament will be able to generate based on how viewership for the qualifying process and previous Epic Games events have performed.
While Epic Games has continued to put resources into a professional production for its broadcasts, viewers have typically preferred to instead watch the perspective of their favorite player on a personal Twitch channel. It’s unclear if the potential of losing that personal perspective element could hurt the reach of the event.
