Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
The Overwatch League 
experienced some issues with its main stream on Thursday, preventing some fans from being able to watch the action, but that didn’t stop the league from having its best weekend of Stage Two.
After some viewers posted about not being able to watch Thursday night, technical support responded on Blizzard Entertainment’s
forums.
“There are technical issues with the Overwatch League stream and Blizzard is working to resolve it quickly. If you have the All-Access pass you can watch any feed other than the ‘main stream’ feed to watch the broadcast,” a spokesperson posted. “The feed on WatchESPN is also working. (You cannot earn tokens from this provider.) MLG, OverwatchLeague.com do not seem to be working.”
The lack of a consistent stream hurt the league’s viewership numbers on Thursday night and made it nearly impossible to get a grasp of the league’s average concurrent viewership for the evening. However, following the technical slip up, the league’s stream managed to post some of its best viewership for the stage and was up year-over-year for the first time in Stage Two.
Despite a less-than-stellar hours watched total for Thursday, the league managed to pull 3.37M hours watched for the weekend across its main channel and top four alternate broadcasts, up from 3.26M hours watched for Week Three of Stage Two last year for the main OWL channel, French-language broadcast, and Korean-language broadcast.
Average viewership statistics for the full weekend weren’t obtainable due to issues with the OWL feed breaking in and out on Thursday night, but viewership was slightly lower this year on the third and fourth days of action.
While the second day of action matched 2018’s figure at 118K CCV, Saturday’’s average of 125K CCV was down from last year’s 129K. Sunday’s action was down from the last day of action as well sitting at 115K CCV, down from 132K.
This week’s viewership signaled a slight shift for the league that had been in a rut for the last two weeks with diminished year-over-year viewership figures to start Stage Two. Last week, the league saw a dip in viewership to 3.22M hours watched, which was down from 3.37M hours watched last year. The league’s average CCV saw an even more drastic dip to 103K CCV, down from 137K in 2018.
Overall viewership for the main OWL channel, including re-runs and peripheral coverage, hit 3.6M hours watched for the week averaging 40K CCV; that figure is also down slightly from last year when the channel produced 3.4M hours watched for the week with an average of 44K CCV.
Peak viewership for the League was hurt on Thursday night, but even after that, it was slightly below that Max CCV figures from last year. The weekend’s highest viewership of 125.3K CCV came on Saturday. That number was down from 140K CCV on the final day of Stage Two Week Three in 2018.
This weekend’s peak came around the middle of the Saturday broadcast despite a lack of competitive matches. A pair of sweeps by the London Spitfire
and Seoul Dynasty bookended a 3-1 win by the Shanghai Dragons over the Florida Mayhem .
While Twitch remains the primary platform for measuring viewership habits of the core Western esports audience, it does not represent the totality of Overwatch League viewership. Fans can watch action on OWL’s official website, Battle.net, and MLG. Additionally, matches are streamed in China on Zhanqi.tv, NetEase CC, Bilibili, and Huya, and Blizzard also has a deal to broadcast matches on Disney-owned platforms including ESPN, ABC, and Disney XD.
