Howdy there and welcome to the top 50 streamers list thread for this month!
For those of you who don't already know what this is about: I'm gathering various data from all the streams that are presented on teamliquid.net (viewers, game, events, etc.) and use that data to produce the pretty tables you see below. The tables only contain SC2 players (that is, people streaming games of Starcraft 2 being played by themselves) and not casters, teams or other streams. The tables also only contain Starcraft 2 related activities, a SC2 streamer streaming Dota2 or other games is not being taken into account (which explains Destiny's comparatively low streaming hours).
A minor difference to last month is that a streamer has to stream 5 hours (not 2.5) to be included in the ranking. Due to the feedback from last month's thread, I've created two tables this time: One sorting the streamers by the average viewers, as last time, and one sorting the streamers by average viewers * hours streamed. I'm still not sure which version is more useful, to be honest. Sorting by average viewers punishes streamers that stream during unfavorable times or big events, as well as those that stream a lot. Sorting by average viewers * hours streamed obviously favors those who stream a lot, even if they are not as popular. Since I'm a lazy bum, I've created a poll at the bottom of this thread to let you guys decide which way is better.
Now, without further ado, here's the two tables: (The HTML versions contain some more information due to space reasons.)
It seems that the downwards trend in viewers from last time has mostly been averted. Hooray! Only Idra lost a whole lot of viewers this time. But he also streamed a whole lot more last month (going up from 16 hours to over 50), so that might be a reasonable explanation for that.
To my surprise, Hui is not #1 in the viewers*hours category. I expected him to be in the number one spot in that category for all eternity solely because he streams way more than anyone else. Guess I was wrong!
Notable absentees this time around: HuK, MC, HerO, SaSe, SeleCT, Nerchio, Feast and Hasu. They either didn't stream at all last month or not enough to be included in the rankings.
For some reason, Hui has two streams on teamliquid: "Hui ." and "wayne379". They both link to the same stream. Sometimes one is used, sometimes the other, sometimes both at the same time. This seriously confuddled my script and required some adjustments.
Congratulations to ailuj for being the first female streamer on the list!
Congrats also to Root Gaming for having six(!) players in the viewers*hours ranking. Geez, you guys do stream a lot!
That's all I can think of for now. Hope you guys enjoyed!
Oh, yeah, and here's the poll:
Poll: Which kind of ranking is better?
Sort by average viewers * hours streamed (161)
56%
Sort by average viewers (116)
41%
Other (specify in comments) (8)
3%
285 total votes
Your vote: Which kind of ranking is better?
(Vote): Sort by average viewers (Vote): Sort by average viewers * hours streamed (Vote): Other (specify in comments)
On July 02 2012 04:38 graNite wrote: Great! Is there a way to make extra statistics for viewers of a tournament?
It depends. I do gather all the events data as well (everything that's under the "on air:" column to the right of teamliquid.net), and it's possible to get various data from this. Unfortunately, all the big, premier events (GSL, IPL, MLG) do not provide viewer data from the streams themselves. So, I cannot reasonably create a "most popular tournament" list, since the tournaments that are obviously most popular won't be included. For smaller tournaments, however, I can provide such data.
There's other caveats too, though. At times tournaments restream their events under the same event name, for instance, and there's no way for me to differentiate between the original airing and the restream.
For your poll, I voted for V*H, but I honestly like both. AV is cool to see which persons draw in the biggest viewer numbers when they're on, but V*H is cool to see which streamers could be potentially profiting the most from their streams. Both rankings are interesting in their own right.
Great job ! Went for the "other" option and would find it good if you stick to both of them as I think it adds a little more perspective to the numbers. Would you mind to do even a third one where you add up all streaming activities of certain teams? Maybe some of them are interested in how they fare against each other in terms of exposure on streams.
On July 02 2012 05:22 Nazeron wrote: Why is illusion listed as Z? hes T isnt he?
Hmm, you're right, nice catch! I grab the race-data from teamliquid, though, which is added by the streamers themselves. So someone go and poke Illusion and tell him to change his race.
Sort by average viewers * hours streamed really isn't that telling in my opinion when it comes to popularity. I'd far rather you kept providing both graphs with purely average viewers being the main one.
I realise average viewers * hours streamed is leading in the poll but given the topic views to poll votes and the fact the poll is after the average viewers * hours streamed graph then you're getting huge voter bias to those who are already interested in average viewers * hours streamed.
On July 02 2012 05:22 Nazeron wrote: Why is illusion listed as Z? hes T isnt he?
Hmm, you're right, nice catch! I grab the race-data from teamliquid, though, which is added by the streamers themselves. So someone go and poke Illusion and tell him to change his race.
I think he plays mostly Z when he streams. At least I saw him playing so every time I took a look at his stream.
On July 02 2012 05:48 leo23 wrote: Please include "Sort by both methods" as an option in the poll.
My reason for voting other.
Yeah, Destiny was featured for about 5 hours the month before due to his defeaturing.
And I don't think I can change the poll any more, so just vote "other" if you're in favor of both options. They're pretty close right now anyhow, so that's what I'll most likely be doing.
On July 02 2012 06:10 Bromazepam wrote: While the drop is not as significant as last month's, if you sum all the viewer differences (excluding new entries) the result is still about -1900.
Also no one peaked 10k this month.
I do believe there is a minor mistake with the gathering system that the OP is using.
On June 26th Stephano peaked over 10k while he was streaming the TSL qualifiers.
On July 02 2012 06:10 Bromazepam wrote: While the drop is not as significant as last month's, if you sum all the viewer differences (excluding new entries) the result is still about -1900.
Also no one peaked 10k this month.
I do believe there is a minor mistake with the gathering system that the OP is using.
On June 26th Stephano peaked over 10k while he was streaming the TSL qualifiers.
OP, is there a reason this might not have been recorded?
Hm, that's interesting. I'd guess the values are taken on intervals, and there could have been a peak that didn't last long that appeared right between intervals.
Unless there have been multiple sightings of higher viewer numbers. In that case I'd be more inclined to think there's a discrepancy between the system used here and the number reported by Twitch.
On July 02 2012 06:10 Bromazepam wrote: While the drop is not as significant as last month's, if you sum all the viewer differences (excluding new entries) the result is still about -1900.
Also no one peaked 10k this month.
I do believe there is a minor mistake with the gathering system that the OP is using.
On June 26th Stephano peaked over 10k while he was streaming the TSL qualifiers.
OP, is there a reason this might not have been recorded?
Yes, definitely. My script runs every 15 minutes, so if there is a peak within those 15 minutes it won't reach my database. On top of that, I get my viewer numbers from teamliquid and not directly from the various streaming websites, making the data slightly less accurate.
I just looked at what my database has to say about this:
select date, viewers from log inner join players on players.p_id=log.p_id inner join dates on dates.d_id=log.d_id where name="Stephano" and date>"2012-06-26 00:00:00" and date<"2012-06-27 00:00:00";
On July 02 2012 06:10 Bromazepam wrote: While the drop is not as significant as last month's, if you sum all the viewer differences (excluding new entries) the result is still about -1900.
Also no one peaked 10k this month.
I do believe there is a minor mistake with the gathering system that the OP is using.
On June 26th Stephano peaked over 10k while he was streaming the TSL qualifiers.
OP, is there a reason this might not have been recorded?
Yes, definitely. My script runs every 15 minutes, so if there is a peak within those 15 minutes it won't reach my database. On top of that, I get my viewer numbers from teamliquid and not directly from the various streaming websites, making the data slightly less accurate.
I just looked at what my database has to say about this:
select date, viewers from log inner join players on players.p_id=log.p_id inner join dates on dates.d_id=log.d_id where name="Stephano" and date>"2012-06-26 00:00:00" and date<"2012-06-27 00:00:00";
The numbers are pretty close, so my guess is that the peak happened within those 15 minutes, probably right before Stephano signed off.
This is true, he turned his stream off 10 minutes later. But a peak is not an average (not saying it's the data you provided is an average but you get the idea) but a maximum and I think it should be recorded as one.
Edit: Using a script to find the maximum might work better, although I do not know how hard it might be to write.
On July 02 2012 06:10 Bromazepam wrote: While the drop is not as significant as last month's, if you sum all the viewer differences (excluding new entries) the result is still about -1900.
Also no one peaked 10k this month.
I do believe there is a minor mistake with the gathering system that the OP is using.
On June 26th Stephano peaked over 10k while he was streaming the TSL qualifiers.
OP, is there a reason this might not have been recorded?
Yes, definitely. My script runs every 15 minutes, so if there is a peak within those 15 minutes it won't reach my database. On top of that, I get my viewer numbers from teamliquid and not directly from the various streaming websites, making the data slightly less accurate.
I just looked at what my database has to say about this:
select date, viewers from log inner join players on players.p_id=log.p_id inner join dates on dates.d_id=log.d_id where name="Stephano" and date>"2012-06-26 00:00:00" and date<"2012-06-27 00:00:00";
The numbers are pretty close, so my guess is that the peak happened within those 15 minutes, probably right before Stephano signed off.
This is true, he turned his stream off 10 minutes later. But a peak is not an average but a maximum and I think it should be recorded as one.
I'd love to have a more accurate way of recording peaks, of course, but I don't know what else could be done here, other than potentially lowering the rate at which I take my data. I'm pretty sure the API's for the streaming sites don't have a "peak" value that I could grab.
A nice month for Squirtle even though he streamed so little. I know a few other Startale players stream (Virus, Sound) but they never get any decent numbers.
On July 02 2012 06:10 Bromazepam wrote: While the drop is not as significant as last month's, if you sum all the viewer differences (excluding new entries) the result is still about -1900.
Also no one peaked 10k this month.
I do believe there is a minor mistake with the gathering system that the OP is using.
On June 26th Stephano peaked over 10k while he was streaming the TSL qualifiers.
OP, is there a reason this might not have been recorded?
Yes, definitely. My script runs every 15 minutes, so if there is a peak within those 15 minutes it won't reach my database. On top of that, I get my viewer numbers from teamliquid and not directly from the various streaming websites, making the data slightly less accurate.
I just looked at what my database has to say about this:
select date, viewers from log inner join players on players.p_id=log.p_id inner join dates on dates.d_id=log.d_id where name="Stephano" and date>"2012-06-26 00:00:00" and date<"2012-06-27 00:00:00";
The numbers are pretty close, so my guess is that the peak happened within those 15 minutes, probably right before Stephano signed off.
This is true, he turned his stream off 10 minutes later. But a peak is not an average but a maximum and I think it should be recorded as one.
I'd love to have a more accurate way of recording peaks, of course, but I don't know what else could be done here, other than potentially lowering the rate at which I take my data. I'm pretty sure the API's for the streaming sites don't have a "peak" value that I could grab.
I understand. Keep up the good work I enjoy these lists.
On July 02 2012 08:21 -Kira wrote: I don't know who the hell is "Hui" but it bothers me that his name means literaly "Dick" in Polish...
iirc he is a Taiwanese player. Basically the "Destiny" for Asia if that's a good comparison. A lot of viewers, but not really too successful in the pro scene. Unless there's a better analogy lol.
On July 02 2012 13:22 j3i wrote: ForGG has been my go-to stream for the summer. I hope he gets more viewers!
Definitely mines as well! Ever since HerO stopped streaming that is.
Absolutely love this information. Thanks so much for putting it together.
Things like this give me hope for increased income for these streamers. I know many make a good living and there's sponsorship dollars, donations, and all that but I mean in terms of direct "here's money for the entertainment" cash. Bands, comedians, and the like can make a great deal in a short amount of time; these guys are putting in hundreds of hours a month (I know there's a difference between the Dave Matthews Band or Louis C.K. and Whitera, but I think in terms of hard work and enjoyment experienced by the viewer there may not truly be). The amount of time people spend doing this kind of thing professionally can be hazy and hard to quantify so placing the factual numbers on your lap is nice.
On a related note, if you're one of those views and can afford to do so, maybe give the Subscribe button a little poke!
On July 02 2012 04:38 graNite wrote: Great! Is there a way to make extra statistics for viewers of a tournament?
It depends. I do gather all the events data as well (everything that's under the "on air:" column to the right of teamliquid.net), and it's possible to get various data from this. Unfortunately, all the big, premier events (GSL, IPL, MLG) do not provide viewer data from the streams themselves. So, I cannot reasonably create a "most popular tournament" list, since the tournaments that are obviously most popular won't be included. For smaller tournaments, however, I can provide such data.
There's other caveats too, though. At times tournaments restream their events under the same event name, for instance, and there's no way for me to differentiate between the original airing and the restream.
Ok, but then make the stats you can create I would like: average viewers per NASL Day, viewer peak etc...
On July 02 2012 23:04 Koshi wrote: I would keep both tables if it isn't too much extra work for you. I love the effort you put into this, I really like these stats.
Thx Conti.
Completely agree.
The first table is more or less a popularity contest and shows who the community want to watch. It is not perfect, but will give a good idea about popularity. Popularity from viewers could easily be used as a tool for finding invitees to larger tournaments and thereby assure some advertising in that way!
The second is more of a useful indication of the best economic prospects. The higher, the V*H, the better economy for the stream itself. If you can get information about prices of 1000 viewer impressions, some indication of how ofthen the different prices occur or if it is flat-rate, an indication of how often commercials occur on the particular stream and how many actually see the commercials, the data can be used to directly indicate economic feasibility of the streaming itself. Getting all of these numbers with any kind of certainty will probably be extremely difficult, but the possibility is there.
Cutting one of them would be unfortunate since they tell such different stories!
On July 03 2012 05:01 Probe1 wrote: It hurts my soul to see Nestea out of the top ten in any list.
It hurts you to see nestea, the guy who won 3 GSL titles in the top 10, but not someone like destiny who has never even made it past the qualifiers of any real tournament? Personally it hurts me to see non pro players at the top of the list getting more viewers than absolutely amazing players like DRG, nestea, mvp.
edit: wow sorry it's too early >.< I thought you said it hurts to see nestea in top 10, not out of top 10. For some reason I also thought nestea was there
On July 03 2012 05:01 Probe1 wrote: It hurts my soul to see Nestea out of the top ten in any list.
It hurts you to see nestea, the guy who won 3 GSL titles in the top 10, but not someone like destiny who has never even made it past the qualifiers of any real tournament? Personally it hurts me to see non pro players at the top of the list getting more viewers than absolutely amazing players like DRG, nestea, mvp.
I don't usually check these threads but weren't stream viewing numbers a LOT higher last year? Has there been a drop-off in SC2 viewership in general (ie tournaments as well) or is it just streams?
It kills me how of the absolute best players of each race in the world, only MKP can be found in the top10.. and it's not like he is inarguebly the best terran either I think..
On July 04 2012 04:37 Aocowns wrote: It kills me how of the absolute best players of each race in the world, only MKP can be found in the top10.. and it's not like he is inarguebly the best terran either I think..
You think people watch streams to learn to play better ? They want entertainment, people barely play starcraft anymore
On July 04 2012 04:37 Aocowns wrote: It kills me how of the absolute best players of each race in the world, only MKP can be found in the top10.. and it's not like he is inarguebly the best terran either I think..
You think people watch streams to learn to play better ? They want entertainment, people barely play starcraft anymore
ya I know, I am just annoyed at seeing players like Nestea and MvP not getting all the views they deserve
On July 04 2012 01:48 Smancer wrote: I would really like to see this aggregated by team. Can you do that?
Yes, that's definitely possible. I'm currently a bit short on time, though, but that's one thing I want to do in the future.
I'm not sure how to do the ranking by teams, though. How do I fairly rank a team with 1 streaming player as well as a team with 10 streaming players? If I do viewers*hours, I favor the teams with more players, if I do (viewers*hours)/number of players, I punish teams with streamers with low viewer numbers. Is there a smart, fair way to do this?
Thank you big time Condi for this list, wonder where I would have got myself if I wasn't afk for the last 4-5 days of june ^^ o well thanks once again !
On July 05 2012 04:32 Matador wrote: What happened to the old version that used to show top streamers across all games? I would be very interested to see that info.
On July 04 2012 01:38 tuho12345 wrote: IdrA has more viewers than DRG, I guess ppl just check in for his taste of music and trolling around after he rages quit lol
He streams rarely and the American audience would like to see how he is fairing.
DRG plays the same as every other korean Z streaming with the same music type.
Would be interesting if they could separate SC2 and non-SC2 streaming hours. Because every time I tune in to Destiny's stream he's playing LOL or something non SC2. Does Destiny even play SC2 anymore?
On July 04 2012 04:37 Aocowns wrote: It kills me how of the absolute best players of each race in the world, only MKP can be found in the top10.. and it's not like he is inarguebly the best terran either I think..
You think people watch streams to learn to play better ? They want entertainment, people barely play starcraft anymore
ya I know, I am just annoyed at seeing players like Nestea and MvP not getting all the views they deserve
It kinda seems like a lot of the tippy top tier players have really poorly configured streams. It's pretty annoying going to watch someone like July stream only to be annoyed that whoever configured his stream should be backhanded.
Content is definitely important in a stream, but so is the way that it is delivered.
On July 04 2012 01:38 tuho12345 wrote: IdrA has more viewers than DRG, I guess ppl just check in for his taste of music and trolling around after he rages quit lol
He streams rarely and the American audience would like to see how he is fairing.
DRG plays the same as every other korean Z streaming with the same music type.
All the other Koreans play American dance music and the entire soundtrack to Wicked? Wow, I must be out of the loop.
Maybe you can build in some extra statistics which show how much money each player approximately made during the month with streaming.
I know, it would be very generaly and vague, cause we don't know the exact numbers for viewer count (which actually get the ads) and profit per viewer. But there are rumors of numbers in different forums that say 2$ per 1000 viewers per ad (or so). Maybe you can asume how many viewers get the ads and the calculate the income of each streamer per month.
On July 07 2012 09:15 staples2 wrote: I would be interested to see where day[9] would be in this. Not when casting events but just the daily. (yes i know he went on a pretty long vacation)
Day[9] dailies, coming right at ya.
sqlite> select date,name,avg(viewers) from log inner join events on events.e_id=log.e_id inner join dates on dates.d_id=log.d_id where name>"Day[9]" and name<"Daz" group by log.e_id order by date; 2012-05-23 05:15:06|Day[9] Daily #467 - EmpireViolet vs coLGanZi|2811.6 2012-05-24 05:30:02|Day[9] Daily #468 - Huk and Sase Fantastic PvT openings|2032.33333333333 2012-05-31 05:15:02|Day[9] Daily #469 - ToD vs Parting - Amazing PvP|3032.2 2012-06-06 05:15:02|Day[9] Daily #470 - Bomber's TvP Revolution!|4522.2 2012-06-07 05:30:02|Day[9] Daily #471 - Bomber vs Ostojiy - Nydus/Raven in TvZ?|4363.33333333333 2012-06-08 05:15:02|Day[9] Daily #472 - Stephano's fast max ZvP|4860.2 2012-07-03 05:15:02|Day[9] Daily #473 - Nerchio vs BratOK - I'm back!|8307.0 2012-07-04 05:15:02|Day[9] Daily #474 - LiquidHerO vs mouzMaNa - neat PvP|4209.8 2012-07-05 04:45:02|Day[9] Daily #475 - Warp Prism PvT style!|4062.33333333333 2012-07-06 05:15:02|Day[9] Daily #476 - ZvP mutalisk transitioning|4480.75
So, recently, his dailies averaged at around 4500 viewers, I'd say.
On July 07 2012 10:12 Reithan wrote: Would be interesting if they could separate SC2 and non-SC2 streaming hours. Because every time I tune in to Destiny's stream he's playing LOL or something non SC2. Does Destiny even play SC2 anymore?
I already do that, actually. Destiny streamed about 125 hours of Starcraft 2 last month, 33 hours of LoL and 111 hours categorized as "Misc", which for the most part would be DayZ, I think.
On July 07 2012 15:36 enemy2010 wrote: Maybe you can build in some extra statistics which show how much money each player approximately made during the month with streaming.
I know, it would be very generaly and vague, cause we don't know the exact numbers for viewer count (which actually get the ads) and profit per viewer. But there are rumors of numbers in different forums that say 2$ per 1000 viewers per ad (or so). Maybe you can asume how many viewers get the ads and the calculate the income of each streamer per month.
Just a thought
I thought about doing something like that, but decided against it. As you say, the numbers would be pretty vague and guess-y at best, and would most likely be way off from the actual numbers. And with no way of checking if my numbers would be correct, I would most likely end up misinforming people. I don't want to be responsible for people saying "Player X makes Z amount of money per month with his streaming!" when my calculation of Z is only a very, very wild guess and might be way off the mark.
I don't think there's an easy way to find out how many ads a specific streamer is showing. If I had that data, I could make a much more educated guess as to how much money they make. But still, it would only be wild guessing. (I'd still have no idea how many viewers have adblock, for instance.)
You can use the average viewers*hours streamed table to get an idea as to who is most likely making the most money through streaming, though.
On July 04 2012 01:48 Smancer wrote: I would really like to see this aggregated by team. Can you do that?
Yes, that's definitely possible. I'm currently a bit short on time, though, but that's one thing I want to do in the future.
I'm not sure how to do the ranking by teams, though. How do I fairly rank a team with 1 streaming player as well as a team with 10 streaming players? If I do viewers*hours, I favor the teams with more players, if I do (viewers*hours)/number of players, I punish teams with streamers with low viewer numbers. Is there a smart, fair way to do this?
I think summing the V*H number for each team than dividing it by the number of players is good. It will give an average V*H number per team.
On July 04 2012 01:48 Smancer wrote: I would really like to see this aggregated by team. Can you do that?
Yes, that's definitely possible. I'm currently a bit short on time, though, but that's one thing I want to do in the future.
I'm not sure how to do the ranking by teams, though. How do I fairly rank a team with 1 streaming player as well as a team with 10 streaming players? If I do viewers*hours, I favor the teams with more players, if I do (viewers*hours)/number of players, I punish teams with streamers with low viewer numbers. Is there a smart, fair way to do this?
I think summing the V*H number for each team than dividing it by the number of players is good. It will give an average V*H number per team.
Hmm, yeah, that seems the best way to do it. But even that has its obvious disadvantages. I can already tell you that by that method, Xpec Ironmen, Tt Esports and Team Grubby will be the top three, since Hui, White-Ra and Grubby are the only members of the corresponding teams that stream. If there would be, say, another Xpec Ironmen player streaming occasionally with maybe 50 viewers on average, it would seriously hurt the team's rating. Similarly, nowadays we have a whole lot of Korean pro's streaming, and a lot of them barely get any viewers, so my guess is that the Korean pro teams will rank pretty poorly in such a team-ranking.
Wow this can be crazy profitable. Take someone like MaximusBlack. 294151 V*H. Lets say he runs 4 Commereicals per hour at $.005 per viewer per commercial. These are all low estimates and he is still making $5,883 a month. The numbers are porbably closer to $.015 per viewer per commercial and 5 or 6 commercials per hour (assuming he runs them back to back between games). At this he is making over $20,000 a month. Crazy stuff.
On July 18 2012 10:10 Scorevath wrote: Wow this can be crazy profitable. Take someone like MaximusBlack. 294151 V*H. Lets say he runs 4 Commereicals per hour at $.005 per viewer per commercial. These are all low estimates and he is still making $5,883 a month. The numbers are porbably closer to $.015 per viewer per commercial and 5 or 6 commercials per hour (assuming he runs them back to back between games). At this he is making over $20,000 a month. Crazy stuff.
I am a bit skeptical that he makes 240,000 USD a year.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top50June.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top50JuneX.png)
ailuj for being the first female streamer on the list!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JTBOq.png)
