Mentioned in this article
The International for Dota 2 stood out as the most-watched event on Twitch during August, with two channels producing more than 15M hours watched.
Meanwhile, Zack “Asmongold” (last name unknown) edged out Turner “Tfue” Tenney as the most-watched personality broadcaster with help from the release of World of Warcraft Classic.
The following channels are ranked according to the total number of hours watched on Twitch, from July 1-31, with data compiled using TEO Access.
Year-Over-Year
The International for Dota 2 may not have seen an increase in viewership overall this year, but the event moved up to the top spot this year after taking second place to Tyler “Ninja” Blevins in 2018. While Blevins’ exit from Twitch to stream exclusively on Mixer could be seen as a loss for the platform, 2018’s top streamer wasn’t producing nearly the same viewership this year before moving to Microsoft’s livestreaming platform.
Additionally, the release of World of Warcraft Classic helped Asmongold make his way into this year’s top 10 for August as the top personality streamer despite not being in the top 10 at all in 2018. More than half of Asmongold’s 11.4M hours watched this August came in the final week of the month, when generated 7.4M hours watched from Aug. 26-31 following Classic’s launch.
Top Channels: The International
The International for Dota 2 serves as the multiplayer online battle arena’s premier yearly tournament, generating some of Twitch’s strongest viewership each year. While TI didn’t manage to reach the same level of viewership as it did in 2018 overall, the event’s max concurrent viewership of 482K during the finals was higher than last year’s peak of 397K CCV.
Russian-language viewership for TI was down this year with the main channel for Russian-language coverage recording 15.2M hours watched, down from 16.3M last year, and there are several potential reasons for lower overall viewership for TI this year.
Last year, the final Russian-language team to be ousted from the tournament, Virtus.pro, lasted longer than they did this time around. This year, Virtus.pro, which was also the final CIS team in the tournament, was defeated in the double-elimination style main event bracket with an 0-2 record.
Meanwhile, viewership could have also been hurt slightly because of the event taking place across the world from where it was last year. In 2018, TI took place in Vancouver, while this year’s event was played out in Shanghai.
What’s Trending: Striking Gold
Asmongold is known for his ability to generate viewership by interacting with his massive community of World of Warcraft fans, and even in 2018, he was the game’s most-watched streamer on Twitch.
However, the release of Classic has been a boon for Asmongold to an extent that no one could have possibly expected. In just the month of August alone, Asmongold’s channel produced more than half of the hours watched that it did in all of 2018, and there’s nothing to suggest that he won’t keep his audience.
While WoW Classic’s audience as a whole will likely see a decline as the luster of the “new” game wears off, Asmongold’s ability to cultivate an audience using in-game interactive events with his fan base gives him an edge on most other streamers.
As Blizzard Entertainment continues to roll out content for WoW Classic in its multi-phase strategy for releasing the game, Asmongold will likely stay at the forefront of both WoW and Twitch.
