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:
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.
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
(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.
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.
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!
EG players just have a very high quality stream. I think Idra being released from EG has helped his numbers. Does seem like HOTS is decreasing in viewer numbers as time passes. I do think people grow bored of first person streams of playing. WCS is good, but I only tune in when the group has players I like to watch. But really the only stream I watch is man vs game.
The WCS EU RO32 figures are equal to the equivalent of last season, ie 30-35k. So at least no loss of viewership there. I think the 'low' MLG peak can be attributed to the weaker player roster and just the general decline of hype for HoTS.
Dunno how the average works, but i've had about 200-300, going into the 500's... every time i get on and stream. Also, Legion disbanded if you could change me to teamless that'd be appreciated
On July 02 2013 08:17 nicensleazy wrote: The WCS EU RO32 figures are equal to the equivalent of last season, ie 30-35k. So at least no loss of viewership there. I think the 'low' MLG peak can be attributed to the weaker player roster and just the general decline of hype for HoTS.
As for the grand finals, they clashed with confederations cup finals (football), which probably led to a lot of hard decisions for sports fans. : (
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.
ofc there's still space especially with all the other crap.
On July 02 2013 08:21 avilo wrote: Dunno how the average works, but i've had about 200-300, going into the 500's... every time i get on and stream. Also, Legion disbanded if you could change me to teamless that'd be appreciated
Thanks, I've fixed the team.
As for the averages, they are usually lower than expected. I've just had a look at your numbers, and they indeed end up somewhere between 200-300 (or even 400) viewers for every stream. But you, like every other streamer, start with 0 viewers, and it always takes some time (usually at least a full hour) before you get your daily "average". So if you stream for 4 hours, you'll have your usual viewer numbers in only 3 of them, while the first hour drags your actual average down.
On July 02 2013 08:21 avilo wrote: Dunno how the average works, but i've had about 200-300, going into the 500's... every time i get on and stream. Also, Legion disbanded if you could change me to teamless that'd be appreciated
Thanks, I've fixed the team.
As for the averages, they are usually lower than expected. I've just had a look at your numbers, and they indeed end up somewhere between 200-300 (or even 400) viewers for every stream. But you, like every other streamer, start with 0 viewers, and it always takes some time (usually at least a full hour) before you get your daily "average". So if you stream for 4 hours, you'll have your usual viewer numbers in only 3 of them, while the first hour drags your actual average down.
Ah, i see, thanks for that info! Glad to know i'm not just hallucinating every time i stream -_-
On July 02 2013 07:19 archflames wrote: Are you able to know how many commercials were played during stream times? I'm curious to know how much streamers like IdrA make in a month
No, there's no way to reliably get that information. All I could do is make an educated guess (4 commercials per hour?), make another educated guess as to how much money those ads make, and then make another educated guess as to how many people have adblock turned on. So with a lot of guessing, I could end up with some numbers. But it's entirely possible that they would be wildly inaccurate, and I do not want to start rumors that player X makes Y amount of money each month when I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Awesome as always One of my least streamed months.. sorry everyone! DH/MLG took time away but I also had a xsplit issue for a week that had me dropping frames (gunrun to the rescue)
Crazy stuff as usual, thank you so much for your work. Stephano is so smart with those 5.25 hour. :p
Millenium TV rocking at DreamHack, french fans are here ! Very surprised about the viewers number for the Woongjin Stars matches. Even EGTL is below on average. Maybe the hours were not the same though, with Woongjin Stars matches fitting more EU hours.
[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
Oh, I wish SQLite would prettyprint tabular data a bit, like making sure the columns are equal width and such.
[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
Oh, I wish SQLite would prettyprint tabular data a bit, like making sure the columns are equal width and such.
There is a column option, but it cuts off the entries after a handful of characters or so. And then there's the option of having tab-separated lists, which I probably should have done. Would still look weird in parts, though.
On July 03 2013 01:18 KingCobra90 wrote: Hi im not teamless, vega squadron
I'm truly surprised at the amount Artosis streams, as I think I've only caught one of his streams in the last 4 months. It must be during my sleeping hours
On July 03 2013 07:07 Greendotz wrote: I'm truly surprised at the amount Artosis streams, as I think I've only caught one of his streams in the last 4 months. It must be during my sleeping hours
AFAIK it mostly is since he's on Korean hours so I think he streams middle of the night for us.
I'm so surprised more people don't watch Jaedong when he streams :s
On July 02 2013 07:19 archflames wrote: Are you able to know how many commercials were played during stream times? I'm curious to know how much streamers like IdrA make in a month
No, there's no way to reliably get that information. All I could do is make an educated guess (4 commercials per hour?), make another educated guess as to how much money those ads make, and then make another educated guess as to how many people have adblock turned on. So with a lot of guessing, I could end up with some numbers. But it's entirely possible that they would be wildly inaccurate, and I do not want to start rumors that player X makes Y amount of money each month when I have no idea what I'm talking about.
the fill rate is pretty variable and depends on their ad inventory and regional stuff as well as just % of our community with adblock, there's no way to estimate it at all. most private sc2 streams make small money, big ones make up to a few thousand a month with occasional exceptions.
The lack of supply observation seems spot on to me about numbers in the graphs being down. I for one can say there has been many days/nights I hop online to view streams and low and behold none I care to watch are available.
Side note: I don't know if this is true or random chance, but during WCS broadcasts via the Twitch TV app on Xbox or Phone it refused to load anything but the WCS stream. If I don't care to watch WCS I just go do something else. This phenomenon I experienced could only be correlated as something silly twitch is doing if others experience the same issue on the Twitch app (not the site, that always works fine). If it's universal and something twitch is doing this wouldn't help viewer counts at all either.
Top 7 streamers are not koreans. WCS nowadays is almost koreans-only in all regions. Something is not right. People wants to see other players in tournaments. WCS finals should have no more than 40% of koreans (they'll win anyways, I know, but people wants to challenges among several countries).
On July 05 2013 03:31 MarcoBrei wrote: Top 7 streamers are not koreans. WCS nowadays is almost koreans-only in all regions. Something is not right. People wants to see other players in tournaments. WCS finals should have no more than 40% of koreans (they'll win anyways, I know, but people wants to challenges among several countries).
To be fair the top Koreans don't really stream, Flash, Innovation, Soulkey etc, though I doubt they'd get Stephano-like numbers and I still agree with your overall sentiment.
As always, only table 2 matters. It's irrelevant if Stephano streams for 5 hours a day and gets an average of 7k and stays on #1.
V*H is the correct calculations imo.
Anyways, as always, thanks for taking your time to create those stats. I'm a statistics freak, I love reading them up, it's my guilty pleasure.
Sadly seems the viewers start to lower for SC2, hopefully this month it'll be better. I agree, there are fewer streamers. I, unfortunately, only watch a couple of streamers or some Romanian streamers if they stream.
it could be that this is the last time Stephano is on the list. And...if Grubby continues to stream like he did the last days, maybe now its his time...?
Stardust isn't new, he's been streaming like a year. You guys just wouldn't tune in until he won a dreamhack. His mechanics, etc, have been just as good the whole time
On July 05 2013 04:33 Inimic wrote: Stardust isn't new, he's been streaming like a year. You guys just wouldn't tune in until he won a dreamhack. His mechanics, etc, have been just as good the whole time
"New" for the purpose of the list means that the player has not made into the respective top 50 in the previous month.
On July 03 2013 07:07 Greendotz wrote: I'm truly surprised at the amount Artosis streams, as I think I've only caught one of his streams in the last 4 months. It must be during my sleeping hours
AFAIK it mostly is since he's on Korean hours so I think he streams middle of the night for us.
I'm so surprised more people don't watch Jaedong when he streams :s
So just to get this straight, if you want to get featured, don't play arcade while streaming or anything but your main attraction as it hurts your rating on the charts. Shouldn't you be looking at top 5 days of viewers instead? This would be to avoid the restriction to have downtime with the viewers... for example playing Star Strikers with the viewers.
EDIT: Forgot to add streaming at different times, also brings in more or less viewers, so streaming at night would also bring in less viewers for that reason.
While the current system may work for people like Tarababcock or DJWheat because they draw more casual gamers, people that are more technical (Gamegene, kawaiirice, avilo, etc) get a lower rating for downtime or relax stream time.
On July 07 2013 20:39 gawdsed wrote: So just to get this straight, if you want to get featured, don't play arcade while streaming or anything but your main attraction as it hurts your rating on the charts. Shouldn't you be looking at top 5 days of viewers instead? This would be to avoid the restriction to have downtime with the viewers... for example playing Star Strikers with the viewers.
EDIT: Forgot to add streaming at different times, also brings in more or less viewers, so streaming at night would also bring in less viewers for that reason.
While the current system may work for people like Tarababcock or DJWheat because they draw more casual gamers, people that are more technical (Gamegene, kawaiirice, avilo, etc) get a lower rating for downtime or relax stream time.
Just my 2 cents.
They just have to tag their stream as something else on TL. Those numbers are only recorded if your stream is tagged as starcraft2 on TL.
On July 07 2013 12:59 FXOdesRow wrote: Thank you for your work <3 if you run out of TL+ I'm seriously considering gifting it to u <3!
He also does a lot of great stuff for aligulac. He is an all round German programming machine, and we all know the German bots are the most efficient. Suck it shellbot.
There is one thing missing from this thread - twitch kinda sucked in June. There were countless complaints about constant stutter at any resolution (including 240p), site was a bit unstable and so on.
It did affect me - I find it kinda hard to click that stream link, expecting all these issues to come up again and again. Fixing them would be most helpful.
Next months' figures might be interesting. Just from casual observation it seems SC2 stream numbers have seen quite a sharp decline over the last few weeks, both for pro streamers and WCS. Could this just be the that the summer is upon us and more people are out and about? or is this the beginning of a longer term trend? concurrent games appear to have taken quite a hit too.
EPT
![[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)
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.
KingCobra: He's a Russian streamer, mostly playing daily and weekly cups.
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Monthly%20viewers%202013%2006.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/WCS%202013%2006.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Proleague%20GSTL%202013%2006.png)
