EPT
This month's edition won't be as long as last month's, since there's no gigantic year-end table to present to you. But there's still something new for y'all that I'm sure you've all been waiting for: GSL viewer numbers!
Thanks to GSL finally switching to Twitch full-time (Thank you so much, guys at GSL!), I am now able to gather not only the weekly Proleague viewer numbers, but also the viewer numbers for GSL. And given that these two eSports behemoths at times are even going at it head-to-head, those numbers sure are interesting. Who do you think will win that fight? Proleague, or GSL? Will it be an even fight or a beat-down? Well, more on that later!
Table of contents
- Huh? What's this?
- Top 50 streamers in January 2013
- The big picture
- Proleague vs. GSL
- A poll!
- Older entries
Huh? What's this?
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.
Also, the HTML version linked beneath the images has some more information that I had to leave out due to space limitation, most notably the featured status of the players.
Now, Without further ado, here's this month's tables:
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top%2050%202013%2001.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top%2050%202013%2001x.png)
Stray observations
- Boy, people sure like watching EG's Zergs going at it, eh? Stephano, Jaedong and IdrA remain the most popular streamers out there. Jaedong's numbers went down significantly from last month, but it's still enough to give him a comfortable second place.
- Speaking of EG.. geez! Half of the players in both top 10 lists are EG guys! 11 of their 13 players have been streaming last month. And not only that, they've been streaming like crazy! Want more proof? Well, how about this: Total hours streamed by EG playeres in December 2012: ~180. Total hours streamed by EG in Jaunary 2013: ~670. Last month's year end list was clearly showing how popular the EG guys are in general. Could it be that it inspired them to stream again some more? I honestly have no idea, but like any other guy I'd like to think that my work has some meaning and gets people to do positive things, like streaming more.
- The number of streamers playing HotS seems to grow again, doesn't it? So many green bars.. More on that in the next section.
- Notable absentees this month: NaNiwa, MC, TaeJa, qxc, MorroW, GanZi, Revival.
- I still haven't found the time to graph viewer numbers by hours of the day. My apologies, desrow.
Exams will be mostly over next week, and I'll have more time to devote to fun things again then! - if you find any mistakes or errors in the lists, please do let me know, especially concerning team changes or players that you are absolutely sure should be on the lists, but are not.
The big picture
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Monthly%20viewers%202013%2001.png)
(The actual numbers are not important, it's the ratio between month that's important.)
Did you know that Heart of the Swarm is right around the corner? The pros sure do! Last month I predicted a "steady" rise of HotS viewer numbers, and a slow decline of WoL viewer numbers. Yep, I'm definitely no Nostradamus, folks!
HotS viewer numbers are up significantly from last month, almost reaching the level of the start of the beta, and that's two months before release! The viewership will only grow until the HotS release. And even the WoL viewer numbers are up, if only slightly.
And with no premier tournament happening in February, the numbers overall will most likely keep rising, while March looks equally bright. There'll be big tournaments, sure, but there will also be HotS. Here's to hoping the expansion will bring lots of new players (and viewers).
Proleague vs. GSL
You'll notice that there are two GSL groups missing from the graph, Group A and Group D. My script borked right around the time Group A was playing, and I unfortunately miss any data for exactly the few hours GSL was on. Talk about bad timing. :/ For Group D, the link on teamliquid's sidebar linked to gomtv.net instead to the Twitch.tv stream. Since I get my numbers through teamliquid (something I plan to change in the long-term, especially now that I will never have to deal with own3D's horrible API again), here, too, I am missing the actual viewer numbers. Sorry about that!
As a bit of an apology, I've included today's Proleague and GSL numbers, since I'm sure you guys wouldn't want to wait a whole month to find out how Stephano's done in terms of viewer numbers.
It should also be noted that these numbers are only for the English streams of the corresponding leagues. These numbers say nothing about Korean viewers.
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Proleague%20GSL%202013%2001.png)
Now isn't that interesting? When they're not competing directly with each other, GSL viewer numbers are roughly equivalent to Proleague viewer when EG-TL is playing. When they are competing, however.. ouch! Proleague just has no chance at all against GSL, it seems.
Today was a special case, with EG-TL playing on Proleague (which usually guarantees >10.000 average viewers) and Stephano playing for the first time in GSL in Group H (which was hyped all over the place). Proleague viewers were cut in half, while Stephano did not at all impact GSL's average viewerships.
This one is hard to interpret. It could be that Stephano vs. EG-TL simply cancelled each other out. Would today's GSL group have gotten a lot more viewers if they were not competing with Proleague? Proleague definitely suffered, EG-TL's usual numbers were basically cut in half, so it's definitely a possibility. Then again, we had another foreigner in the GSL with HuK, and even without any Proleague competition, Group C didn't gain just roughly 2000 viewers on average. So perhaps Stephano wasn't as big a draw for the foreign crowd after all. It's hard to say.
A Poll!
So, that's all for this month!
Well, almost. Now that Proleague and GSL viewer numbers are here to stay (it appears), I will of course keep presenting those numbers. But, technically speaking, those numbers don't have a whole lot to do with the top 50 streamers of a given month, right?
So here's a poll for you all. Should I keep presenting all my numbers in one big thread a month, or should I split up what I have? That is, should I do one "Top 50 streamers" and one "Proleague and GSL numbers" thread, or keep the two combined as they are right now? On the one hand, there might be people who want to know about event numbers and don't care about streamer viewership (and vice versa), on the other hand, I wouldn't want to spam the sc2 forum each month. So.. poll time!
Feel free to voice your opinion on this in the thread, too, of course, especially if you have a smart, third option that my stupid self hasn't come up with yet.
Poll: One thread per month, or multiple threads (one per topic) per month?
Keep it all in one thread! (292)
94%
Split it up, one for top streamers, one for GSL/Proleague (18)
6%
Something else (specify in comments) (2)
1%
312 total votes
Split it up, one for top streamers, one for GSL/Proleague (18)
Something else (specify in comments) (2)
312 total votes
Your vote: One thread per month, or multiple threads (one per topic) per month?
(Vote): Keep it all in one thread!
(Vote): Split it up, one for top streamers, one for GSL/Proleague
(Vote): Something else (specify in comments)
Hope you guys enjoyed, as always. Any kind of feedback is always welcome!
Older entries
- Top 50 streamers in Dec 2012 (plus Top 100 2012!*)
- Top 50 streamers in November 2012
- Top 50 streamers in October 2012
- Top 50 streamers in September 2012
- Top 50 streamers in August 2012
- Top 50 streamers in July 2012
- Top 50 streamers in June 2012
- Top 50 streamers in May 2012
- Who is the most popular streamer?(Numbers inside!) (March-April 2012)
