Credit: ESL/Helena Kristiansson
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The ESL Pro League Season 9 finale led an esports laden week for viewership on Twitch as high-profile influencers slowly made their way back to work after the Electronic Entertainment Expo took them from their channels.
The following channels are ranked according to the total number of hours watched on Twitch 
from Monday to the following Sunday, with data compiled using TEO Access.
Different Kind of League
The ESL Pro League Season 9 for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive doesn’t follow the sort of condensed, standalone tournament format that most top events in the CS:GO professional circuit exhibit. However, it still manages to attract many of the top teams in the scene as well as strong viewership.
Season 9 began in the middle of April with four regional competitions that concluded in May before a sixteen team finals that took place last week from June 18-23. There are about two Pro League seasons that take place per year, and while the event doesn’t hold the same clout as a Major, it’s viewership is about as strong as you’ll see from any non-major event.
Earlier this year, the final week of action for the ESL Intel Extreme Masters Katowice Major in late February racked up 7.4M hours watched on the main ESL CS:GO Major. This past week’s Pro League final averaged 34K CCV for 3.6M total hours watched. Live coverage of the grand finale on Sunday averaged 146K CCV, peaking at 224K.
GOOOAAL!
Rocket League isn’t known for being a regular presence among the upper echelon of Twitch content or esports, but the game’s main channel was the fifth most-watched game this week thanks to the Rocket League World Championship .
The Rocket League Championship Series Season 7 World Championship only took place for three days with just 21 hours of airtime, but its average CCV of 85K helped it accrue 1.8M hours watched. The final day of action for the event on Sunday averaged 103K CCV across eight hours, peaking at 177K CCV. More than 800K of the event’s 1.8M hours watched came from that broadcast.
Real Life Guardian
The Twitch marathon portion of community-based charity event GuardianCon generated 1.4M hours watched on the platform this past week, but it was the $2.27M raised from Twitch for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital that truly stood out this week.
The marathon is made up of numerous blocks of airtime that streamers sign up to participate in. When a streamer is assigned a block instead of streaming on their channel, they stream on the GuardianCon channel and use oftentimes fun and wacky incentives to attract viewers and donations for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Destiny 2 and Fortnite were the most popularly played games by streamers who participated in the marathon with 446K and 302K hours watched, respectively, throughout the week. Ben “DrLupo” Lupo served as the event’s final streamer for the week, and he ended the marathon with a bang raising just more than $920K in a 4.5 hour timeslot.
