It seems that everything needs to be quantified in order to gauge success. Throughout the esports induꦏstry, one big way to judge the appeal of theꦕ product is with the viewership numbers and while those don't paint an entirely clear picture, it is an important aspect of the industry.
While not matching the highs of the previous two seasons, the 2020 season of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Overwatch League still had ﷽solid numbers with almost 140K peak viewers despite the change to YouTube and a mass exodus of broadcast talent leaving prior to the league's third season.
140K viewers may not seem like a lot compared to the previous opening weekends of the Overwatch League. 2018 saw nearly 440K to kick off the new league and the 2019 season began with almost 300k at its peak. It's a drastic downturn when comparing those numbers but is still hard to gauge the success of the 2020 opening weekend because this is the first season where the Overwatch League is not being streamed on Twitch. Instead, the matches are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:exclusively broadcast on YouTube and while it's the largest video platform in the world, Twitch sti💞ll pulls in larger numbers when it comes to live broadcasts.
It all gets a little blurry when looking at and the numbers for the league. The almost 140K comes strictly from streaming ꦬon YouTube but the Chinese markets have a different streaming service and if you include those numbers, it jumps to an impressive 900K viewership. It's hard to decipher that information, though as the other seasons don't have numbers for Chinese platforms.
I guess what this article is trying to say is success based🅷 on viewership is hard to gauge but still can be used to see the relative health of a league. With the Overwatch League it's a little blurry and more than one season on YouTub🏅e will be needed to see the growth (or decline) of the league. Despite the downturn in numbers, OWL seems to be going in the right direction and the promised Homestand format has already provided another level of experience to the league as a whole. It will be interesting to see how the numbers change as the season goes on.