EPT
This month will be slightly less fancy than usual, due to upcoming exams this week. Sorry in advance for that.
Let's get right to it, shall we?Table of contents
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.
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.
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%2006.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top%2050%202013%2006x.png)
Stray observations
- One of these days (or, er, months) we will see a non-EG Zerg sitting on the throne. But last month was not that month. The minimum required streaming time to get into the top 50 is 5 hours. Stephano streamed for 5.25 hours. Almost seems like he's streaming just enough just to keep his #1 spot.
- I think it's safe to say by now that Idra's lack of a team did not at all hurt his stream numbers. He's been the most prolific streamer last month, and once again had the highest peak of all streamers. Nice!
- If memory serves me right, Ms.Spyte marks the first non-featured streamer (with the exception of our Taiwanese player Hui) to ever go above 1000 viewers on average. Congratulations!
- The top 50 chart by average viewers has never been as highly contested as last month. Sjow, barely making it into the list at #50, had an average of 520 viewers. With the same amount of viewers, he would have been #35 in February!
- Here's some information on some of the lesser known names in the lists:
Hui:Hui is a Taiwanese player who is mostly playing in the TeSL. His fanbase seems to be found mostly outside of teamliquid and in the Taiwanese community, unsurprisingly.- Tara Babcock: She's an, ahem, model. Google her.
KingCobra: He's a Russian streamer, mostly playing daily and weekly cups.
- I still have no way of getting MC's stream numbers, since he is streaming from azubu.tv. He's not listed on teamliquid (see the other thread), and there does not seem to be an API for azubu.tv either, so it's currently not possible to get live viewer data from them. Given the current situation, though, I dare say it's only a matter of time before MC returns to twitch.
- Notable absentees this month: MMA, jjakji, Ret, Hyun, Jim & Macsed.
- 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%2006.png)
(The actual numbers are not important, it's the ratio between month that's important.)
Huh.
Doesn't look good, does it? Kind of looks really bad, actually. The weird thing is, I mentioned above that the last month has been highly contested, and that the average viewers of last month's #50 stream has had 200 viewers more on average than the #50 spot in February. And as you can see below, the WCS numbers are quite stable, too.
So what could this mean? Does this mean the obvious, i.e. there is a clear lack of interest from viewers in player streams, now that WCS is about? Or is it the other way around, and it's the supply, not the demand that has fallen? Are there simply less streams on these days? And if so, why is that? Again, is WCS to blame?
My previous observations indicate the latter: Average viewers for streams has been quite high last month, despite the overall lack of viewers. So let's look at the numbers from a different perspective. My apologies in advance, but I have my exams this week, and I do not have the time to create another fancy graph for this. Instead, have a slightly less fancy SQL query:
sqlite> select yearmonth,count(*) from log inner join players on players.p_id=log.p_id
inner join dates on dates.d_id=log.d_id where date>"2013-01"
and date<"2013-07" and log.game in("SC2","WoL", "HotS") and
streamertype="Player" group by yearmonth;
2013-01|22722
2013-02|20546
2013-03|26065
2013-04|24409
2013-05|20033
2013-06|16232
As with the graph, the actual numbers are not important, but the relation to each other is. This is a count of all the SC2 player streams in a given month (one for every stream active in a 15 minute timeframe). There's a clear downwards trend in line with the downwards trend of viewers in the last three month. But look at February's numbers, and compare them to February's viewers in the graph above: The overall viewers are almost the same in February and June, but the number of available streams was much larger in February. So last month's player streams had a pretty good viewership, all things considered.
So there we have it. This is an issue of lack of supply, not lack of demand. Why there is a lack of player streams lately, however, I have no idea. Is it really WCS? We have WCS in all regions now, and all players of note participate in it or at least try to qualify for it. Are we getting a bit of the Korean culture of streaming less to hide build orders and play styles? Or do some players simply have enough to do already with WCS? I honestly have no idea, and I would love to hear from players and streamers what they have to say about this. Let me know!
WCS
The usual caveat applies: The GSL numbers taken below are solely those from twitch.tv, and do not include people viewing from gomtv.net or numbers from the Korean streams.
Another thing to note is that WCS EU has multiple streams for different languages. I decided to add them all up, since it is unlikely that there are that many people who watched different language streams concurrently. Still, it's entirely possible, and the WCS EU numbers are most likely a bit inflated due to this.
On the other hand, the WCS finals had multiple English language streams. I only list the stream with the highest average viewership here. This is the reverse of the above situation: The numbers will most likely be artificially deflated because of this, but there's nothing I can do: I do not know how many people had multiple streams open vs. how many people only watched one stream. I can only assume that, with multiple same-language streams showing different games, chances are much higher that more people watched multiple streams.
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/WCS%202013%2006.png)
So last month hasn't been as utterly crazy and full of WCS as the month before. Phew.
Viewer numbers are pretty stable. WCS EU is still doing quite well, and the WCS NA finals were pretty good, too, though not at all comparable to WCS EU finals.
As I mentioned above, the WCS finals numbers are artificially deflated, as the graph only shows the stream with the highest viewer numbers. If I would add up all the English languages streams, the numbers would he highly inflated instead. For what it's worth, the peak viewership for both WCS NA and the WCS finals were almost equal, at 54000 and 53300, respectively.
And since I wondered about non-WCS related stream numbers last month, here are non-WCS related stream numbers! Again, due to lack of time I could not make any fancy graphs for this, my apologies. Things'll be back to normal again next time, I promise!
First of all, Dreamhack:
[DreamHack] Summer Day 1 2013|dreamhackTV|30078.6896551724
[DreamHack] Summer Day 1 2013|dreamhacksc2|8798.0
[DreamHack] Summer Day 1 2013|TaKeTV|2625.79310344828
[DreamHack] Summer Day 1 2013|Millenium TV Event|2537.09803921569
[DreamHack] Summer Day 1 2013|RoccatDIMAGA|2095.01818181818
[DreamHack] Summer Day 1 2013|ROOTAxeltoss|1818.77192982456
[DreamHack] Summer Day 1 2013|MoriCupStream|1809.96428571429
[DreamHack] Summer Day 1 2013|Anoss|1163.14814814815
[DreamHack] Summer Day 1 2013|sc2tv.ru|1068.5
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|dreamhackTV|44199.4583333333
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|Millenium TV Event|4482.30434782609
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|TaKeTV|3885.55319148936
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|ROOTAxeltoss|3610.70212765958
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|MoriCupStream|3485.92
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|JoRoSaR|2066.38
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|Anoss|1971.02564102564
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|RoccatDIMAGA|1778.18181818182
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|Empire.Brat_OK|1310.44
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|sc2tv.ru|1295.33333333333
[DreamHack] Summer Day 2 2013|TheArgie|1218.74468085106
[DreamHack] Summer Day 3 2013|dreamhackTV|56465.3392857143
[DreamHack] Summer Day 3 2013|Millenium TV Event|3276.47058823529
[DreamHack] Summer Day 3 2013|JoRoSaR|2199.9375
[DreamHack] Summer Day 3 2013|MoriCupStream|2122.11764705882
[DreamHack] Summer Day 3 2013|Empire.Brat_OK|1332.82352941176
[DreamHack] Summer Day 3 2013|RoccatDIMAGA|1229.625
So many streams! And an average of 56.500 viewers for the last day on the main stream. That's not too shabby at all. And, more importantly, a peak of 110.046! So Dreamhack definitely did quite well.
Next, MLG:
[MLG] Day 1 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2|28942.36
[MLG] Day 1 Spring Championships 2013|NASL.tv|4802.28
[MLG] Day 1 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2D|1413.68421052632
[MLG] Day 1 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2C|1267.36842105263
[MLG] Day 1 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2B|1218.27777777778
[MLG] Day 1 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2A|940.5
[MLG] Day 2 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2|42383.3529411765
[MLG] Day 2 Spring Championships 2013|NASL.tv|7924.52
[MLG] Day 2 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2C|2894.3137254902
[MLG] Day 2 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2A|2842.45833333333
[MLG] Day 2 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2D|2580.125
[MLG] Day 2 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2B|2025.14
[MLG] Day 3 Spring Championships 2013|MLGSC2|64114.5625
An average of 64.100 in the last day. Nice! The peak was at 80.500 viewers, not quite as high as Dreamhack, but still very good.
So it looks like there is still space for non-WCS tournaments out there, and they will still do well. I can sleep soundly now. If it weren't for those pesky upcoming exams.
Proleague vs. GSTL
As above, take these numbers with a grain of salt:
- Both Proleague and GSTL numbers are only taken from twitch.tv.
- Proleague also has a Korean stream, as well as a TV audience. Neither is taken into account here.
- As already mentioned, GSTL viewers watching from gomtv.net are not taken into account.
- In addition, the link to the current GSTL stream on teamliquid.net more often than not leads right to gomtv.net, and not to twitch.tv. When that happens, the numbers don't even take viewers from teamliquid.net into account. That would explain some of the numbers below.
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Proleague%20GSTL%202013%2006.png)
Proleague is actually beginning to catch up to GSTL. And it's not just EG-TL that gets the high viewer numbers, but also the Proleague leader, Woongjin Stars. You guys aren't switching sides from the least successful to the most successful team, are you?
So that's all for this month.
Hope you guys enjoyed, as always. Any kind of feedback is always welcome!
Older entries
- Top 50 streamers in May 2013 (plus WCS numbers)
- Top 50 streamers in April 2013 (+ WCS/GSTL/SPL!)
- Top 50 streamers in March 2013 (HotS numbers!)
- Top 50 streamers in February 2013 + Proleague/GSL
- Top 50 streamers in Jan.2013+Proleague/GSL viewers
- 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)
