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The European Speedrunner Assembly held its ESA Winter 2020 charity event last week. As is typically the case with big speedrunning charity marathons, the event led all channels on Twitch.
League of Legends streamer Ashkan “TF Blade” Homayouni has built up momentum for himself through a unique streaming challenge that appears to have captivated the Twitch audience.
WePlay! Esports’ Dota 2 Tug of War: Mad Moon led all channels in esports viewership, as the lack of combined Riot Games events or any Activision Blizzard esports opens the door for other channels to claim the spotlight.
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.
It is a Requirement That You Continue to Go Fast
Each year, the Games Done Quick charity speedrunning marathon dominates Twitch viewership during its run. However, the success of last week’s ESA Winter 2020 shows that the formula is not unique to GDQ.
The European speedrunning organization generated 1.78M hours watched during its run last week, leading all channels and making the case for speedrunning as some of the most consistently compelling content across the platform.
Chasing the Top Spot Across the World
Homayouni has set himself a challenge to reach the top spot on the League of Legends ranked ladder in every major region. Having already achieved this in North America and Europe, he has now set his sights on South Korea, considered the most difficult online ladder in the game.
This effort has created significant interest from Twitch viewers, who last week made Homayouni the most-watched League of Legends streamer, a title typically controlled by Tyler “Tyler1” Steinkamp. The TF Blade Twitch channel generated 1.77M hours watched over the course of the week.
Esports Free-For-All
In 2019, the top esports rankings week to week were largely controlled by the combined League of Legends viewership of the main Riot Games channel and the Overwatch League. This year, with Riot splitting its viewership across individual channels for each league, and the OWL off the platform entirely, the top of the viewership chart sees much more week-to-week variance.
This week, the top esports channel was WePlay’s Russian-language broadcast of a Dota 2 event held in Ukraine with $300K USD on the line. The Russian stream generated 1.76M hours watched with the English broadcast also reaching the top 10 with 1.32M.
