*Minus Jan. and Feb., see below for more info. Hey there, and happy new year everyone!
Welcome to a very special edition of the top 50 streamers list! You'll get your usual top 50 streamers list from last month, of course. But on top of that, you will also get the first top 100 streamers list for the last year! That's right, the top 100 Starcraft 2 streamers of 2012 list is here.
That's not all, though. Remember how I keep repeating that the big events (GSL, IPL, MLG, etc.) don't offer their live viewer numbers, and that I therefore don't publish any event viewer numbers? Well, there's one big event that started recently that does not play by those rules. And it just so happens to be a hugely popular event with regular casts. So, get ready for some Proleague numbers.
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 the streamer themselves) and not casters, teams or other streams. The tables also only contain Starcraft 2 related activities. So CatZ streaming Dota2 will not be taken into account, for instance.
For live stream data, go and visit soiii's site http://sc2streamnumbers.com/ where you can check out detailed graphs of stream viewers of every stream. (Thread here). Please check it out, it's pretty awesome. I thought about doing something like that at some point, but soiii did it way better and prettier than I could've ever done.
The list
Due to space limitations, I have to shorten the headers and leave some data out of the tables presented here. You can get the full tables from the links below. The headers aren't as clear as I'd like them to be thanks to this, so here's a quick explanation, just in case: "Viewers" denotes the average viewers in the given month. "Hours" are the hours played. "Place diff" and "Viewer diff" are the place and viewer differences compared to last month. And "HotS%" is the percentage of Heart of the Swarm streaming compared to Wings of Liberty. A full green bar means the player streamed only HotS, a grey bar means he only streamed WoL.
Now, Without further ado, here's this month's tables:
Haha, just kidding. Seriously, though, is anyone the least bit surprised?
Out of the top 10, 6 streamers have not streamed at all in November. Welcome back, Grubby, Naniwa, MC, Taeja and Sen! And of course, welcome, Jaedong.
Between IdrA, Stephano and Jaedong, the most watched stream will most likely be an EG Zerg for all eternity.
I have decided to include djWHEAT in the streamers lists from now on. I originally placed him in the caster's category (because he is!), but recently he's been streaming a lot of himself playing the game, making him eligible for the list. If any of you know of any other casters not in the list who also stream their games, please let me know!
Similarly, if you find any mistakes or errors in the lists, please do let me know, especially concerning team changes. Note, however, that the list does not reflect team changes that happened after Dec. 31. So yes, I know that desRow found a team (congrats to him!), but by the time the list was compiled, he was still teamless.
Also, apologies to desRow, who asked for a graph of viewers by the hour to see when people are watching streams in general. Haven't yet found the time to do one, though I will most likely add one in the future, either in this thread or next month's. Promised!
Some notable absentees this month: Destiny (Switched to LoL), Hero, Polt, violet, Incontrol (), Sheth.
Well, That's all I can think of for now.
The big picture
(The actual numbers are not important, it's the ratio between month that's important.)
As expected, viewer numbers went up last month. They're still far from September's numbers, but personally, I'm still not worried. I expect the HotS viewer numbers to steadily rise until the release of the game, while the WoL numbers will most likely fall somewhat, and then crash the moment HotS is released. For the overall numbers, however, I do not dare to make any predictions.
The big list (Top 100 2012)
One thing that needs explaining here is the "months active" column. Each bar represents a month. If it's red, the streamer in question did not stream, if it's green, he did (even if he's just streamed for a few minutes in the entire month). I did not start gathering data until mid-March, so the bars for January and February are greyed out, since I do not have any information for those. So yes, the tables are not for the entire year, technically speaking, but I figured you guys would appreciate them anyhow. The HTML version does not contain any additional information, I'll still link to them for convenience, though.
Also, for the purpose of this list, "Retired" means that the person has stopped playing SC2 competitively. That does not mean that they are out of the scene entirely.
The award for most streaming hours in the last year goes to.. Hui! His #1 spot in the viewers*hours category really doesn't come as a surprise, really. 2514 hours streamed in the last year! For comparison, a year tends to only have 8544 hours in total. A close second is ProTech with 2388 hours streamed.
So many retired players.
Again, if there's any mistakes, please do let me know!
Did someone say Proleague?
Please take these numbers with a grain of salt, since I have very few datapoints for some of these games. Remember that I record the stream viewers only every 15 minutes. Short games combined with a 4-0 win can end a Proleague match pretty quickly, giving me not a a whole lot work with. That's the exception, though. On average I have 7-10 numbers to work with per match, giving me rather accurate average viewership numbers.
Not a whole lot to say about these. Gogo EG-TL!
Phew. That's all for this month! Hope you guys enjoyed, as always. Any kind of feedback is more than welcome!
Very nice year-end charts. I wonder how much of the reduction in hours is due to the college semester starting up in september(isn); I got very busy by the middle of November and couldn't watch much at all.
Lots of interesting trends to analyze over the coming years, thanks for providing this information!
On January 04 2013 04:56 ragz_gt wrote: Half of Cella's hour are drunk skype call though >.<V
I'd rather watch drunken Cella Skype call random people than anything else, though there's something to be said for Jaedong's stream - "One does not simply not watch Jaedong's stream.".
Proleague numbers are presenting average viewership during broadcast, correct? Hope people keep that in mind when examining the numbers. For example the latest EG-TL match peaked around 18k, but that's of course not average as represented here.
On January 04 2013 05:30 nmetasch wrote: Do the proleague numbers only pertain to the english stream?
Yes. I use the numbers from the one linked from teamliquid.net
On January 04 2013 05:34 NotRandoMNamE wrote: seems like proleague numbers are heavily dependent on how long the match is and whether or not EGTL is playing
That's not surprising at all. EG-TL is basically our "home team" we can cheer for, people will want to see that. And if a match is short and over in, say, one hour, people will easily miss it. It usually takes about an hour for a streamer to get a good number of viewers. If the stream ends that quickly, that seriously hurts the average viewer numbers.
On January 04 2013 05:51 atteo wrote: Proleague numbers are presenting average viewership during broadcast, correct? Hope people keep that in mind when examining the numbers. For example the latest EG-TL match peaked around 18k, but that's of course not average as represented here.
4 Terrans in the top 15. I like it, and they all good players. I would love to see more T's though hahaha. It aint surprising that Jeadong took #1 , he will probably retain that spot for a while.
On January 04 2013 04:49 ThomasjServo wrote: So much information @___@. JD's stream had 25k views before even going live, it was pretty disgusting(ly awesome) Great write up.
Right on the money. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what numbers JD would get at peak and yeah Assirra lol. I said 10k and that number will whither away eventually. Think I saw him today with around 6k, which isn't bad. It will a gradual transition.
On January 04 2013 06:41 StarStruck wrote: Right on the money. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what numbers JD would get at peak and yeah Assirra lol. I said 10k and that number will whither away eventually. Think I saw him today with around 6k, which isn't bad. It will a gradual transition.
On January 04 2013 06:41 StarStruck wrote: Right on the money. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what numbers JD would get at peak and yeah Assirra lol. I said 10k and that number will whither away eventually. Think I saw him today with around 6k, which isn't bad. It will a gradual transition.
Didn't Stephano hit an 18k peak at some point earlier in the year? I feel like I was there watching when it happened, and he mentioned it in an interview with Seltzer for Lonestar Clash about it being a nice birthday present...
On January 04 2013 06:41 StarStruck wrote: Right on the money. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what numbers JD would get at peak and yeah Assirra lol. I said 10k and that number will whither away eventually. Think I saw him today with around 6k, which isn't bad. It will a gradual transition.
Thanks for the info! Not TOO surprised JD is at the top but a little bit haha. EG still occupying a lot of the top spots which I think they're trying to do.
On January 04 2013 06:41 StarStruck wrote: Right on the money. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what numbers JD would get at peak and yeah Assirra lol. I said 10k and that number will whither away eventually. Think I saw him today with around 6k, which isn't bad. It will a gradual transition.
peaked at 10k today too
JD hwaiting
i saw 9.8ki think
whoop, whoop!
On January 04 2013 06:55 EliteSK wrote: Thanks for the info! Not TOO surprised JD is at the top but a little bit haha. EG still occupying a lot of the top spots which I think they're trying to do.
On January 04 2013 06:41 StarStruck wrote: Right on the money. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what numbers JD would get at peak and yeah Assirra lol. I said 10k and that number will whither away eventually. Think I saw him today with around 6k, which isn't bad. It will a gradual transition.
On January 04 2013 04:49 ThomasjServo wrote: So much information @___@. JD's stream had 25k views before even going live, it was pretty disgusting(ly awesome) Great write up.
Yet his peak was not 12k if we follow the stats.
He peaked at 11.9k I saw it live and he was literally 100 viewers away from 12k. He was higher then 11.3k for quiet awhile when he streamed.
On January 04 2013 06:41 StarStruck wrote: Right on the money. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what numbers JD would get at peak and yeah Assirra lol. I said 10k and that number will whither away eventually. Think I saw him today with around 6k, which isn't bad. It will a gradual transition.
On January 04 2013 04:49 ThomasjServo wrote: So much information @___@. JD's stream had 25k views before even going live, it was pretty disgusting(ly awesome) Great write up.
Yet his peak was not 12k if we follow the stats.
He peaked at 11.9k I saw it live and he was literally 100 viewers away from 12k. He was higher then 11.3k for quiet awhile when he streamed.
Read the post i was replying to. He said 25k when his JD's peak was around 12k. So either the stream numbers were broken (happens more often the you think) or he was simply exaggerating.
Regarding the peak numbers: I gather the data (including viewer numbers) every 15 minutes. That's more than enough to get accurate average viewer numbers for people who stream for a bunch of hours a month. For peak viewer numbers, however, it's not so ideal. A lot of viewers can come and go within 15 minutes, so if you've seen a higher number than what the table shows, you are most likely correct to question the table.
Still, I think the peak column in the tables adds some value to them, despite not being fully accurate.
Thanks for including the Proleague numbers. Cool stuff.
As expected, the kickoff match for the new Proleague season would gain a lot of attention, especially with EG-TL playing for the first time and then even facing KT Rolster. Couple that with the FPL, and those numbers aren't surprising.
The drop in numbers for later matches, even those of EG-TL, are mostly likely due to the production woes, caster situation, and in effect people prefering to watch the Korean streams. We'll see how things develop in the future.
Thank you for the statistics! Did you make a program that notes these stuff for you? If so, wow, you have an always-on machine! That must take up a chunk of resources.
I don't know what the qualifications are, but shouldn't this warrant a feature for Hui? For someone who streams so much, to not have heard of him before this seems unfortunate.
These are interesting numbers. Its very surprising to me that the top streamer (JD) had 5k. Wingsofdeathx who is streaming right now has 22k viewers for League of Legends imo the gap is widening on streamer viewers for different games. I have noticed that there haven't been very many big names for Starcraft streaming consistently lately I wonder why that is?? Maybe the holidays but still
On January 04 2013 15:33 Moonling wrote: These are interesting numbers. Its very surprising to me that the top streamer (JD) had 5k. Wingsofdeathx who is streaming right now has 22k viewers for League of Legends imo the gap is widening on streamer viewers for different games. I have noticed that there haven't been very many big names for Starcraft streaming consistently lately I wonder why that is?? Maybe the holidays but still
As for Hui not being featured: He seems to get most of his viewers from the Taiwanese community, and does not seem to have as much of a fanbase here on Teamliquid. It's not possible for me to find out how many viewers he gets from teamliquid.net vs. how many viewers he gets straight from twitch.tv or other sites, so I can't provide actual numbers. But I trust the TL.net gods admins and would say that he would be featured by now if he had a sizable fanbase here on teamliquid.
Things can change, of course, and perhaps he'll get more exposure eventually. I see that Hui doesn't even have a fan club yet (unless I'm missing something). So if you're a fan and want him to get featured, you know what to do.
Gogo Apollo! 13th top streamer of the year (and the only random player in the list)! I wonder if he would've been as popular if he'd committed himself as a pro rather than a caster?
On January 04 2013 07:02 KimJongChill wrote: Wow, never heard of Hui, but the dude streams a TON.
Same, have I been living under a rock or something? Not to surprised I've never heard of him as his stream isn't featured, but with over 1000 average views he's obviously very popular, can't believe I've never heard of him :S
Can you do the most popular tournaments also? I would like to see how many viewers they got on averege, and see what tournaments are most popular and so on
Anyways keep up the good work! I always enjoy wathing these stats :D
On January 05 2013 10:02 badeanden wrote: Can you do the most popular tournaments also? I would like to see how many viewers they got on averege, and see what tournaments are most popular and so on
Anyways keep up the good work! I always enjoy wathing these stats :D
I can't, unfortunately. Nearly all the major tournaments (GSL, MLG, IPL..) use their own services for their streams, and those do not publish any live viewer numbers.
So I could only offer a very incomplete and, ultimately, meaningless list that would contain the occasional GSL (when they've been using twitch.tv), some smaller MLGs and other smaller tournaments. Being #1 in that list really wouldn't say much. Luckily for me, the Proleague numbers (from the English cast) are not hidden, so I can offer those, at least.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/478103_10151350310178304_405559233_o.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top50December.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top50DecemberX.png)
), Sheth.![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Viewers%20by%20month (Dec).png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top100 2012.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top100 2012X.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Proleague December 2012.png)
