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Welcome this month's edition of the top 50 streamers list. 
Blizzard and Twitch just announced their very own stream awards, with an overall prize pool of $45.000 for the top streamers voted by the community and determined by "data-driven" factors. Anything that recognizes streamers and the work they do (with lots of money, no less) is an awesome thing in my book, so if you haven't voted yet, go and do so now!
I'm quite curious what their "data-driven" categories will be. The only example that they gave was "Most number of hours streamed for Blizzard titles in 2013", in which case PainUser can most likely already look forward to his award. 
Anyhow, off to this month's numbers:
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 (viewers, game, events, etc.) from all the streams that are presented on teamliquid.net (those that you can in the sidebar to your right) and use that data to produce the pretty tables and graphs you see below. The tables only contain SC2 players (that is, streams of people playing games of Starcraft 2) and not casters, teams or other streams. The tables also only contain Starcraft 2 related activities. So, for instance when CatZ is streaming Dota2, it will not be taken into account.
The data I gather is then turned into the tables you see below. One is sorted by the average viewers, the other is sorted by the average viewers times the hours streamed. The latter table favors those that stream a lot, while the former table favors popular streamers regardless of how much they stream. Either ranking has its advantages and disadvantages, and thus I present both.
For either table, I have a minimum required stream time of 5 hours to be included in the list.
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:
Stray observations and musings
- Stephano continues to dominate even after retirement from professional play. He lost a good number of viewers compared to the previous month, but due to Scarlett's absence, he still managed an easy #1 spot.
- In the other category Destiny also lost a some viewers, and also managed to retain a comfortable number one spot all the same.
- The unfortunate situation around HyuN and his team has given him a significant boost in viewers. Here's to hoping he'll find a new and better team soon!
- With Idra announcing the end of Starcraft 2 streaming and going back to school, this might be the last time he appears in the top 50 lists. His numbers have shrunken considerably ever since he retired from professional play, making it less and less viable to make a living from streaming alone. Truly the end of an era.
- 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.
 KingCobra: He's a Russian streamer and commentator, mostly playing daily and weekly cups.
- PsY is "an American Zerg player and YouTuber", says Liquipedia. And who am I to distrust Liquipedia?
- AltWinter: A nice guy who has managed to get 490 viewers on average despite not being featured. Go check him out!
- AprilDai, ThisGuy707, Crowbar: I have no idea who they are, but they barley made it into the V*H category, so they must be awesome. If you know anything about these fine streamers, do let me know!
- Notable absentees last month: Scarlett, NaNiwa, Bomber, Polt, Byun, viOlet.
- 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%202014%2001.png) (The actual numbers are not important, it's the ratio between month that's important.)
Note that these are player streams only.
Not a whole lot to say here. WCS has started again, so, predictably, the player stream numbers have gone down a bit. So far, WCS does not have nearly as much of an impact on player streams as it had last year, however. We shall see if it will stay that way.
Overall stream views
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Monthly%20viewers%202014%2001 all.png) (The actual numbers are not important, it's the ratio between month that's important.)
January saw the start of WCS/GSL, but other than that, there were no big, premier tournaments. We've had ASUS ROG and IEM this weekend, but the final days of both tournaments happened in February, and thus do not appear in the above graph.
In addition, the MLG GameOn Invitational was streamed on MLG's site, which does not offer live (or any) viewer numbers to the general public, so I could not factor in numbers from that tournament, either. From what I've heard, the numbers for the Invitational were not that overwhelming. If there will be more (and bigger) events in the future that will be solely streamed on MLG's streaming platform, I might have to retire this graph again in the future, as it's quite useless without data from all the major events. A pity, but there's nothing I can do about it.
WCS/GSL
WCS EU continues to dominate, though the overall numbers are not too high. Not too surprising, since we're still at the Challenger League/Code A stage. The EU Challenger qualifiers were quite popular, with streams in multiple languages as well as player streams from those who tried to qualify. The China and Taiwan qualifiers for WCS NA were largely ignored by the community, however.
Proleague
Proleague has managed to compete against GSL for the first time. Granted, they were competing with Code A, but the numbers aren't all that bad. Let's see how they'll do against Code S.
That's all for this month. Hope you guys enjoyed, as always. Any kind of feedback is always welcome!
Older entries
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thanks for this!
yeah, the WCS Qualis where just awesome to watch, just as Proleague.
Nice to see HeroMarine in the Top 10, thats a huge success for him!
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pretty sad to see guys like destiny and demuslim that high.
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United States97276 Posts
kind of funny to see Prime vs Jin Air as the most viewed proleague match
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I thought I saw Heromarine with over 5k on New Years Day, but anyway that position is great . He was really pulling viewers in during early January and still is.
Also I'm really surprised that even the weakest WCS EU day still got more viewers than the strongest WCS AM broadcast, even with the huge technical issues WCS EU has been having
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is PainUser on pace to stream more than last year lol?
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I thought Stephano was on EG, I heard that he didn't actually leave the team. Or something along the lines of that. But don't quote me on it, I may be wrong.
I personally believe grubby or Rotterdam should win they always provide good insight. But I'm pretty sure the mass amount of fans of Destiny will make him win.
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Thanks Conti !
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iNcontroL
USA29055 Posts
as always ty for doing this
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Nice to se Psy up there! He has been playing a lot of Starbow lately, but I'd think most of his viewers come from his Hearthstone streams.
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Do you have the numbers for total stream viewers from earlier than april 2013? Would be nice to see a bigger picture.
Thanks for the awesome info as always^_^;
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On February 03 2014 01:34 Shellshock wrote:
kind of funny to see Prime vs Jin Air as the most viewed proleague match
Ya, and multiple matches edging over SKT and KT!
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On February 03 2014 06:51 DJHelium wrote:
Nice to se Psy up there! He has been playing a lot of Starbow lately, but I'd think most of his viewers come from his Hearthstone streams.
I don't think other games viewers are listed, as mentioned in the first paragraph
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one more time thanks a lot conti
please include Alternate as my team
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Canada16217 Posts
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Well done Commander Avilo! o7
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Destiny's to Starcraft and He's back on top
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WCS EU qualifiers were awesome all over to watch. I'm amazed however that even 5k watched WCS AM qualifiers in the beginning. I mean, I tried to watch some myself, but quickly gave up on that... Those who endured (including the casters) have my deepest respect and sympathy!
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Johto4922 Posts
KnowMe is now in Team ALTERNATE, and HyuN is personally sponsored by ROCCAT now.
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Had no idea Apollo had started streaming again, has it been almost a year? Hopefully this isn't a one off and he'll start streaming more consistently.
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Wow stephano is still realllly popular. Slightly surprising. Wcs streams seem a little week so far but obviously we can expect a bump once premier league starts up. EU carrying us so hard
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Conti, I hope someone is paying you for all this work. Great job as always!
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FYI, MLG Adam reported roughly 5k average viewers for GameOn
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Papua New Guinea1058 Posts
On February 05 2014 04:51 Luepert wrote:
Destiny's to Starcraft and He's back on top
Well, he's playing EVE now.
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Retired and Teamless are ruling the streams.
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95% of playerstreams make themselves unwatchable for me through their choice of music ... but thats most likely just me :D
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out of the top 5 ... 3 are teamless/retired ... wow
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Teamless and retired players doing quite well, haha :D
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Pretty sure PsY is PsyStarcraft, and he's been around for a long time (going as far back as WoL beta iirc), casting matches on YouTube and whatnot. I'd have thought he's not exactly an unknown, he certainly wasn't back then, but nowadays I guess many people don't even remember HD, let alone PsY. ;o
Also Retired/Teamless are OP, nerf pls. xD
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Vatican City State582 Posts
Apollo is sponsored by Roccat, isn't he?
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Conti,
Aprildai is a female streamer (below Master league...unless something has changed since I last saw her stream)
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It looks like viewer betting does count in their data. This guy Crowbar and April Daily were viewer betted so that could explain it. Also Tumescentpie 2 k peek was also botted. Suprised to see them 10 viewer bronze player not on here.
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Interesting that more people watched the EU qualifiers than the people who won them (Challenger).
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On February 05 2014 09:00 jax1492 wrote:
out of the top 5 ... 3 are teamless/retired ... wow
Just missinformation, Hyun is not teamless he is with Roccat now, Destiny has personal sponsorship. Same for Marineking, hes no longer retired.
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Wow, Proleague numbers are up substantially. Last season some of the matches would only get like 2k viewers, but here we only have 3 that are under 8k. The top matches are even higher than EG-TL would get last season.
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Northern Ireland24509 Posts
I'm intrigued as to how many people are streaming nowadays compared to before in total.
Overall numbers seem steady, but lots of streams are pulling numbers lower than I recall, so are the viewers distributing out more widely, with the exception of the top guys?
Cheers for the work, TL+ worthy for sure, literally no money until payday though
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On February 05 2014 12:29 DaRKMaTT3r wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2014 09:00 jax1492 wrote:
out of the top 5 ... 3 are teamless/retired ... wow Just missinformation, Hyun is not teamless he is with Roccat now, Destiny has personal sponsorship. Same for Marineking, hes no longer retired.
Was it confirmed that MKP was coming back? I only saw the post saying he was considering it
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On February 05 2014 09:25 dacimvrl wrote:
Apollo is sponsored by Roccat, isn't he?
XMG.
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Wow, WCS EU by far the most watched region.
Nice statistics!
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On February 05 2014 12:29 DaRKMaTT3r wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2014 09:00 jax1492 wrote:
out of the top 5 ... 3 are teamless/retired ... wow Just missinformation, Hyun is not teamless he is with Roccat now, Destiny has personal sponsorship. Same for Marineking, hes no longer retired.
Having some sponsorship is not the same as being on a team.
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On February 05 2014 19:54 GolemMadness wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2014 12:29 DaRKMaTT3r wrote:On February 05 2014 09:00 jax1492 wrote:
out of the top 5 ... 3 are teamless/retired ... wow Just missinformation, Hyun is not teamless he is with Roccat now, Destiny has personal sponsorship. Same for Marineking, hes no longer retired. Having some sponsorship is not the same as being on a team.
Well XMG counts as a team too. And Roccat has Dimaga and Hyun now.. so you could call that a team.
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On February 05 2014 20:29 SpikeStarcraft wrote:
And Roccat has Dimaga and Hyun now.. so you could call that a team.
You technically could call it that, but you would be wrong, at least as of now.
fuck me apparently, this might be an actual team ;o
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MaximusBlack has announced that he will stop streaming the StarCraft 2 ladder and focus on World of Warcraft from now on.
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Retired / Teamless best Team !
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Heromarine becoming very popular I see. Oh and Grubby is still at the top!
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Sorry everyone for replying so late. Exams been keeping me busy.
Thank you everyone for letting me know of the team changes. I updated the teams for kaitlyn and KnowMe. HyuN's and Apollo's sponsors have been updated for the next list, since they were announced in February. MarineKing I'm not changing yet until there's an official statement (or he appears in Proleague or something).
On February 03 2014 07:28 nkr wrote:
Do you have the numbers for total stream viewers from earlier than april 2013? Would be nice to see a bigger picture.
Thanks for the awesome info as always^_^;
Yes and no. I do have data starting from April 2012, but pretty much until the release of HotS, most of the premier tournaments at the time (MLG, GSL, IPL, etc.) did not provide live viewer numbers, and thus all graphs from that time would be wildly inaccurate.
On February 05 2014 09:04 Aeromi wrote: Beastyqt is teamless not retired.
Didn't he announce his retirement in September?
On February 05 2014 11:29 Rickyvalle21 wrote:
It looks like viewer betting does count in their data. This guy Crowbar and April Daily were viewer betted so that could explain it. Also Tumescentpie 2 k peek was also botted. Suprised to see them 10 viewer bronze player not on here.
There's no way for me to verify whether viewer numbers are real or artificially inflated with bots, unfortunately, so there's nothing I can do in that regard. It's Twitch's job to prevent that.
On February 05 2014 13:59 Wombat_NI wrote:I'm intrigued as to how many people are streaming nowadays compared to before in total. Overall numbers seem steady, but lots of streams are pulling numbers lower than I recall, so are the viewers distributing out more widely, with the exception of the top guys? Cheers for the work, TL+ worthy for sure, literally no money until payday though
I also accept cookies.
Hmm, let's have a look at the total number of individual streams that have streamed SC2 (this includes casters, events, players, etc., so the numbers are not totally accurate):
+ Show Spoiler +2012-04|3065
2012-05|2866
2012-06|2693
2012-07|2802
2012-08|2803
2012-09|2735
2012-10|2407
2012-11|1889
2012-12|2021
2013-01|1897
2013-02|1525
2013-03|2369
2013-04|2494
2013-05|2303
2013-06|2041
2013-07|1859
2013-08|1654
2013-09|1503
2013-10|1351
2013-11|1302
2013-12|1341
2014-01|1252
The overall numbers of streamers has been steadily declining, with a noticeable increase during the release of HotS. Still, the numbers have been roughly steady in the last couple of months, at least.
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Have the WCS NA events been streamed during the day before? I'd much rather watch the WCS NA matches but they are in the evening and there's a lot going on after work. I watch the WCS EU because it's on during the workday and I can put it up on the second monitor while I work. Was there a breakdown of how many of the WCS EU viewers were from outside the EU? Not sure if that info is available.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top%2050%202014%2001.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top%2050%202014%2001x.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/WCS%202014%2001.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028950/TL/Proleague%202014%2001.png)
