Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
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Esports organization Method finished World of Warcraft’s most recent raid race to world first as the first to complete Blizzard’s instance yet again, and it’s channel topped viewership for the game during the extended competition.
Previous raiding tiers at the end of January and fall of 2018 were completed by Method as the world’s top guild in just about six-eight days of raiding broadcasts. However, this time around the competition, which was also streamed by Red Bull as well as numerous other top competing guilds, went on for nearly two weeks, starting on July 16 and ending July 28.
The result for WoW as a title was 22.2M hours watched, led by Method’s official raid race broadcast that produced 9.2M hours watched. The second most-watched channel during that period was the personal stream of Limit GM Max “Maximum” Smith who posted 2.1M hours watched with an average of 11K hours watched.
The overall viewership for WoW saw an increase in total hours watched from the previous raid race at the end of January when only Method streamed its efforts with the help of Red Bull as a production partner. During the last race that lasted from Jan. 29 until Feb. 5, WoW produced 13.1M hours watched, and Method led the way with 5.3M hours watched averaging 32K concurrent viewers.
Though the extended nature of the race lowered the average viewership of Method’s production, it also caused a boost for airtime by the stream that racked up 296 hours of airtime, pushing it well ahead of the hours watched figures it recorded earlier in the year.
Meanwhile, the addition of other competitors streaming efforts, and a third-party production of the grassroots event by Red Bull, added to the overall audience for WoW. Smith’s channel was the only one outside of Method’s main stream to record a more than 10K CCV on average, but Red Bull’s official broadcast that primarily featured guilds Limit and Pieces had 1.9M hours watched over 300 hours of airtime.
Smith’s personal broadcast, in particular, performed notably well due in part to the open communications he had with his teammates on stream. While Method was the first guild to stream their personal points of view during a raid race, the organization doesn’t allow for players to stream audio of strategic conversations between guild members during a raid. Smith pushed that bar set by Method by not only streaming his perspective, but also having an audio feed of his team’s strategies and calls.
Other notable competitors to stream their perspective included Method players Scott “Sco” McMillan, who recorded 1.4M hours watched with an average of 7K CCV;Jimmy “Fragnance” Landqvist; and Mike “Gingi” Djebbara. Landqvist and Djebbara had 458K and 381K hours watched, respectively.
This development represented a decline in viewership for personal streams by Method players. Viewership for McMillan’s stream was down from the last raiding tier when he had 2.1M hours watched with an average of 17K CCV. Djebbara had 907K hours watched with an average of 7K CCV from Jan. 28-Feb. 5. Landqvist had 243K hours watched with an average of 2K CCV.
