Top 50 streamers in April 2014

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Conti

Germany2516 Posts

May 05 2014 19:03 GMT

Welcome this month's edition of the top 50 streamers list.

Table of contents

Huh? What's this?
Top 50 streamers in April 2014
The big picture
WCS/GSL
Proleague
Older entries

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:

(HTML version here)

[image loading]

(HTML version here)

Stray observations and musings

Predictably, Stephano is still the most popular streamer, getting the most average viewers and a peak viewership of over 10000, a first for a player stream this year.
Not at all predictably, the number one spot in the viewers*hours category for April goes to Winter, who was virtually unknown just a few months ago. Last month was also the month he's become a featured streamer here on teamliquid, incidentally. Congrats!
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.
- Balloon is a Korean random player who has found a bit of a fanbase over at reddit, among other things thanks to the achievement of being the top of the Korean ladder while playing random, which sure is quite an impressive feat.
- LUISG and aGiLe: I have no idea who they are, but they 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: Bomber, Byun, Hyun, Snute, Supernova.
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.)

Note that these are player streams only.

Just like last month, the downward trend continues for player stream viewership. Not an ideal time to make money from streaming Starcraft 2.

Overall stream views

(The actual numbers are not important, it's the ratio between month that's important.)

First of all, note that this graph does not include the ShoutCraft Clan Wars live viewer numbers and any other event that is being streamed on MLG's platform, since it does not offer live viewership numbers.

Here, too, we see a downward trend, despite the WCS/GSL finals that took place in April, not to mention Dreamhack.

WCS/GSL

The WCS finals haven't been spectacular in terms of viewership, neither WCS EU nor WCS AM coming close to reaching even 50.000 viewers on average, which is quite the pity. It probably did not help that the finals were aired back to back on the same weekend, but given that ESL took over WCS AM at the last minute mid-season, there were probably no other options. Let's see how things work out when there's more time to prepare both finals.

Proleague & ATC

Proleague is still doing well, easily reaching >10000 viewers on average for the second match of the day. ATC is struggling a bit more, and unlike with Proleague, there's no noticeable increase in viewership numbers when there are two team matches streamed back to back on a given day.

That's all for this month. Hope you guys enjoyed, as always. Any kind of feedback is always welcome!

Older entries

monXikk

Poland742 Posts

May 05 2014 19:10 GMT

Pretty sure Stephano is still on EG

nkr

Sweden5451 Posts

May 05 2014 19:10 GMT

is this where we post about dead game?

Nice to see balloon getting a fanbase

Conti

Germany2516 Posts

May 05 2014 19:18 GMT

On May 06 2014 04:10 monXikk wrote:
Pretty sure Stephano is still on EG

He is certainly still representing EG despite having officially retired. Then again, he is also in premier league despite having officially retired, so.. yeah. I honestly have no idea if he is still officially part of EG or not. He's not listed on EG's website, Liquipedia says he's not on EG anymore, but his stream still has the EG overlays, his in-game clan is still EG, etc.

My guess is that he's a honorary member of sorts. There's probably no contract between Stephano and EG any more, and he's probably not getting any money from them, but since it's mutually beneficial for both parties to associate with each other, they retain the status quo. Or something along those lines.

Maybe Incontrol will show up here and shine some light on the issue.

Rail_sc2

Russian Federation205 Posts

May 05 2014 19:27 GMT

Im not in Vega

watchlulu

Germany475 Posts

May 05 2014 19:39 GMT

How is it even possible that there were once again less viewers than in the month before?

It felt like there were a billion tournaments going on in the past weeks, even a lot of big ones.

If only my Internet was good enough, I would watch all available streams at once ;D (not like this would help)

edit: as always - thanks for the Numbers

DarkAutumnSC

United States1 Post

May 05 2014 21:40 GMT

Stephano is still on EG in more than just name only. I have no idea about his contract or whatever, but inControl made it pretty clear this weekend at Lone Star Clash that Stephano was still a real member of EG.

Also, thanks for putting this together Conti. =)

Mahanaim

Korea (South)1002 Posts

May 06 2014 02:16 GMT

numbers aren't something most of us should be obsessed about, but they do once again make us think a little of what we should be doing. Hmm...

Rickyvalle21

United States320 Posts

May 06 2014 02:56 GMT

Wow it looks like the stream numbers are even worth than late WoL era.

iNcontroL

USA29055 Posts

May 06 2014 06:42 GMT

#10

Yeah stephano is still a part of the EG family just obviously not as a full time member

Yozora

Finland65 Posts

May 06 2014 07:15 GMT

#11

Well what else we can expect when Elfi decided to take a break?

Seriously though we need new foreigner hopes because that is the main reason tournaments get higher viewer numbers.

nkr

Sweden5451 Posts

May 06 2014 07:22 GMT

#12

what we need is blizzard adressing poor game design rather than worrying about winrates

fiddling about with hellbats is not going to make the game more interesting to watch

SSgtMcError

United States2 Posts

May 06 2014 13:06 GMT

#13

Protech should have a random icon next to his name in the second table #8.

DarkPlasmaBall

United States46425 Posts

May 06 2014 13:26 GMT

#14

EG, TL, and Teamless kicking ass like usual!

Noocta

France12578 Posts

May 06 2014 15:13 GMT

#15

The peaks in streams is a bit depressing. Nobody managing to even get 4k beside Stephano which is not really a normal thing.
I'm pretty sure even some Hearthstone, Diablo and WoW streams get more.

Galaktus

Germany33 Posts

May 06 2014 15:25 GMT

#16

wow, this is depressing

Psychobabas

2531 Posts

May 06 2014 15:34 GMT

#17

gogo avilo!!

vult

United States9400 Posts

May 06 2014 15:54 GMT

#18

according to the histogram this is the worst month for viewership in recent years

Also grats to the top streamers!

mikumegurine

Canada3145 Posts

May 06 2014 21:02 GMT

#19

Who is Winter and how does he get so much viewers?

some korean pro or something?

Ljas

Finland725 Posts

May 06 2014 21:07 GMT

#20

On May 07 2014 06:02 mikumegurine wrote:
Who is Winter and how does he get so much viewers?

some korean pro or something?

Nope, he's a complete nobody with a really good stream.

urboss

Austria1223 Posts

May 07 2014 06:11 GMT

#21

avilo now going for triple GM!

By the way, it would be nice to see a graph that ranks SC2 view counts with other games on twitch.
If SC2 isn't ranked regularly at the top in the list of games on twitch, this downward spiral will obviously continue as random viewers won't drop in as often.
There were times when SC2 was second in April and then were times when SC2 wasn't even in the top15; but this is just anectodal evidence.
Since you have your server already set up to access the twitch API regularly, it would be nice if you could integrate this data as well!

Koshi

Belgium38799 Posts

May 07 2014 07:29 GMT

#22

I think April was the first month I didn't watch any stream. I don't remember it.
Except Kripp but he isn't listed.

Like, I couldn't be bothered to open one. :/

rpddropshot

United States82 Posts

May 16 2014 12:55 GMT

#23

Winter's stream is the best. I switched to random after 2-3 years as a gold/plat level terran and have beaten platinum opponents as protoss and zerg because of his stream

DarkPlasmaBall

United States46425 Posts

May 16 2014 13:07 GMT

#24

I've been watching Winter a little over the past two weeks, and I'm definitely enjoying his stream. Good, smart commentary, enthusiastic personality, and really strong with all three races. And he streams all the fucking time lol.

JimmyJRaynor

Canada17807 Posts

May 16 2014 13:14 GMT

#25

On May 07 2014 15:11 urboss wrote:
avilo now going for triple GM!

Avilo Rising!

in 2011,
whoda thunk it?
would any one have predicted Avilo would consistently get ranked as a top streamer?
i'm surprised but not shocked.

he has definitely earned it.

WombaT

Northern Ireland27364 Posts

May 17 2014 09:58 GMT

#26

I can't say I understand people's viewing habits, cheers for the data as usual though

marcesr

Germany1383 Posts

May 17 2014 10:46 GMT

#27

I still havnt read a good analysis on what went wrong with Starcraft 2. We had huge investments in the first 2 years and now most of that is in shambles. Where are all the smart people in this community who love the game so much? What do they say about the development?

I cant believe that this is just the law of esports, 2 years of gold rush and then 5 years of depression. I mean, even WC3 did better than this (considering WC3 didnt have the Blizzard money which we have in SC2).

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