While it is often said that Twitch was the true accelerator of the growth of esports in the West, it is sometimes overlooked how, conversely, esports has helped Twitch grow to the massive live video platform it is today. According to the Newzoo Twitch Tracker, 21.3% of all hours watched on Twitch from July to December 2015 was esports content. This sums up to 475.5 million hours of esports content watched across all esports franchises, an average of over 79 million hours a month. An analysis of viewing hours per franchise reveals that the share of esports content compared to game content streamed by consumers varies widely from 12.7% for Hearthstone to 51.9% for Dota 2.
The importance of esports for Twitch is reflected in its continued partnerships with publishers who are growing their franchises as esports titles. The latest of these partnerships include Psyonix’s Rocket League and Super Evil MegaCorp’s mobile MOBA Vainglory. The latter also received a multi-million dollar investment from Twitch itself.
MOBA’S AND SHOOTERS TAKE 85% OF ESPORTS HOURS WATCHED ON TWITCH
As it stands, MOBA’s account for 58% of the total esports hours watched on Twitch, of which most hours come from Riot’s League of Legends and Valve’s Dota 2. Combined with Shooters (primarily Valve’s Counterstrike: Global Offensive), the two genres racked up 406.7 million hours of watched esports content in the second half of last year. This is an impressive 85% of the total esports hours watched.
Still, 10% of hours watched went to streams in the strategy genre. These streams include Age of Empire II: The Conquerors, and the big players, StarCraft II and Hearthstone. Consumers watched a combined 47.3M hours of Strategy esports content in the last six months of 2015. With more titles and genres heading in to esports, it will be interesting to see if this split evens out.
ESPORTS ENGAGEMENT VARIES PER FRANCHISE
In the second half of last year, Twitch generated 2,230 million viewing hours from its top 100 games, where 21.3% was esports content. The games that generate the most hours watched on Twitch and form a steady top 5 are League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Hearthstone, and StarCraft II. Not so surprising considering our PC Games Market Monitor shows these are also the games that are being played most often. Four out of the five titles have been in our Top 20 Core PC Game Ranking for at least half a year now, where only Dota 2 dipped under the top 10 (# 11 in July 2015). While StarCraft II doesn’t consistently feature in this ranking, it does share a big crossover with the players of the other franchises.
Compared to the consumer content, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and StarCraft II generate a lot of esports hours. More than half of the total Dota 2 hours watched is esports content. These three games have a dedicated esports community, whereas the League of Legends and Hearthstone communities have a relatively larger group of non-esports viewers. This is reflected in the contrast between Hearthstone and StarCraft II. Just 13% of the total hours of Hearthstone is esport centered, compared to the 47% of the total StarCraft II hours. In absolute terms, with 29.7M hours watched, Hearthstone still triumphs the 17.5M hours of Starcraft II because of the larger consumer inflow.
ESPORTS EVENTS CANNIBALIZE ON CONSUMER CONTENT
While large esports events drive high traffic on Twitch, they also take eyeballs away from the regular consumer generated content. The graph below shows the hours watched for League of Legends on the three Saturdays preceding the NALCS 2016 Spring Split and the first three Saturdays of the new season. During the first three days of the season, consumer generated content viewership hours of League of Legends were down 44% compared to the three weeks before the season started.
