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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 continue to lead all esports viewership for the month, with most major esports having concluded their 2019 seasons.
Former Overwatch League pro Félix “xQc” Lengyel created cultural moment on Twitch during his push to complete a roughly week-long challenge.
Several Fortnite streamers saw success streaming their matches in the $15M USD Winter Royale tournament.
The following content is ranked according to the total number of hours watched on Twitch from Monday to the following Sunday, with data compiled using TEO Access.
The Grind Never Stops
With so many tournament organizers in the ecosystem, there is a virtually never-ending supply of Counter-Strike and Dota 2 tournaments, as evidenced by the variety of channels broadcasting these games last week. ONE Esports’ Dota 2 invitational in Singapore and the EPICENTER CS:GO event both had multiple channels reach the Top 10, with each generating more than 1M hours watched. In both cases, the Russian-language stream outperformed the English broadcast.
While the open ecosystem games are likely to remain on top for most of January, competition for the top spots will kick into high gear come February when all of the major esports leagues are in full swing.
Jump for Joy
Lengyel has been a staple on the Top 10 for quite some time, steadily growing his stream since leaving the Overwatch League. Last week, the streamer was the most-watched, and arguably most-talked-about influencer on Twitch.
Difficult games are typically a strong source of engagement for variety streamers as they provide a unique emotional and narrative arc to a broadcast. In Lengyel’s case, it was a new content update for indie game Jump King that gave him the momentum to reach the top. Across a full week and roughly 50 hours of gameplay his push to complete the challenge went somewhat viral, becoming a talking point across social media and drawing new viewers to his channel. When it was all over, Lengyel had generated more than 2M hours watched.
Fortnite is Still an Esport
While the World Cup back in July was the conclusion of Fortnite’s first esports season, the competition (and the massive prize money) has not ceased. Last weekend saw Epic Games offer $15M for the Winter Royale – a tournament that last year featured a prize pool of just $1M.
The competition brought out plenty of competitors, most of whom streamed their matches on their personal channels, as is the standard procedure now for Fortnite tournaments.
Turner “Tfue” Tenney and Nick “NICKMERCS” Kolcheff lead these streamers, generating 1.58M and 962.31K hours watched, respectively. While Epic Games has yet to lay out specific plans for Fortnite esports in 2020, these numbers show that there is still at least some interesting in watching the top influencers compete at a high level with millions on the line.
