Credit: Keemstar/Epic Games
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Before Epic Games 
announced its esports plans for Fortnite , YouTuber Daniel “Keemstar” Keem began hosting a streamer-driven tournament called Friday Fortnite where top influencers duked it out in public matches to see who could slay out the hardest.
The rules to the tournament were fairly simple. A group of two players pairs with another duo and queue up for a squad match. Whichever duo has more kills at the end of two games advances. The losing team gets put into the loser’s portion of a double-elimination bracket.
The event was a staple for Fortnite viewership on Twitch
from May into July of last year, but it came to an abrupt conclusion when Epic Games announced its Summer Skirmish series. The newer developer-run event effectively cannibalized Friday Fortnite, and reported prize pool caps set by Epic Games for third-party run tournaments made it not worth the effort for Keem, his team, and participants.
Epic Games’ esports events were never able to capture the same sort of allure that Friday Fortnite. The event brought together the elements of a grassroots organizational effort and high profile influencers with a format that encouraged high action gameplay in public matches – something streamers are used to.
Following the recent fallout between esports organization FaZe Clan and its top player Turner “Tfue” Tenney, the team has looked to protect its reputation in the court of public opinion, and in doing so, co-owner Richard “Banks” Bengston began working with Keem to revive the massively popular event from last summer.
Supporting a prize pool for Friday Fortnite’s return, Bengston and FaZe Clan
helped to restart the weekly tournament for a short period of time. It is also worth noting that, while Tenney is currently one of the most influential influencers on Twitch right now, his popularity largely originated from his consistent, strong performances during Friday Fortnite last year with his teammate Dennis “Cloakzy” Lepore.
There’s no mistaking the sort of effect Friday Fortnite has on Twitch in terms of viewership. Even without Tenney, the most-watched Fortnite streamer this year participating in the event, Friday Fortnite helped the battle royale game reach 3.3M hours watched this past week. Only four other days in the month of May produced more viewership for Fortnite on Twitch.
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins led the way in terms of Twitch streamers as he managed to finish the tournament in third place with his partner Malachi “Reverse2k” Greiner. Blevins’ viewership was strong enough that he even felt the need to let people on Twitter know about the “power of Fortnite Friday.”
The power of Fortnite Friday pic.twitter.com/kb3GO0aRv8
— Ninja (@Ninja) June 1, 2019
Those figures for Blevins were enough to give him his most hours watched for a stream this year as well as his second-highest peak concurrent viewership for the year. His average CCV during Friday Fortnite was the best he has had for any single broadcast session this year as well.
As is the case for many sequels though, viewership for Friday Fortnite this past weekend didn’t quite match some of the viewership statistics it managed to reach when it (and Fortnite for that matter) was in its prime last year.
Eight of Blevins’ top 10 streams from May 11-July 8 in 2018 were during Friday Fortnite. Every single one of them averaged at least around 50% more CCV than this past Friday’s event. Peak viewership for those tournaments on Blevins’ channel ranged from 203K CCV to 354K CCV. Most of those streaming sessions recorded more than 1M hours watched with the most-watched coming on June 29 when Blevins won the tournament and hit 2M hours watched, averaging 204K CCV.
For Fortnite as a whole, Friday Fortnite had a similar effect last year. Many of the most-watched days for Fortnite in May, June, and July last year came on Friday nights with most Friday Fortnite events helping the title achieve more than 4M hours watched on Twitch. A few particularly strong weekends even managed to reach 5M.
It’s not a truly fair comparison to try to look at year-over-year viewership of Friday Fortnite though. The upcoming World Cup for Fortnite serves as strong competition for viewer attention, and overall viewership for Fortnite has come back down to earth after a monstrous year in 2018.
With more FaZe Clan-funded Friday Fortnite events on the horizon, it will be worth keeping an eye on what viewership could look like as the tournament continues to compete with the final weeks of World Cup qualifying.
Tomorrow we will look into what viewership was like for World Cup qualifying last weekend and how it compared to Friday Fortnite’s return.
