Welcome this month's edition of the top 50 streamers list.
My apologies for being a tad bit late, but I did not have any access to proper internet during the last couple of days. Thankfully this has been redeemed by now, and so here I am, throwing more numbers at you. Huzzah!
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:
Congratulations DeMusliM! You finally managed to become #1 in the average viewers category, despite losing some viewers last month. And not only that, you also grabbed first place in the viewers*hours category, too! Nice guys always prevail.
Idra, on the other hand, took a bit of a beating in regards to his average viewership. Just shy of 3000 viewers on average marks the lowest average viewership this year.
Grubby has to be content with the second place. Again. You're not going to be the Stork of streaming, are you?
Also, this marks the first time that the top three streamers on both lists are identical.
Congratulations to Ms.Spyte for getting featured! The numbers clearly support that promotion.
I remain just a teeny bit slightly suspicious that Tasteless does not, in fact, stream any SC2. But the data says that he does, and who am I to not believe one half of the casting archon?
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.
Similarly, I do not include Take (from TakeTV fame), even though he does stream himself playing in his become-a-pro series, as he streams from his main account, which is online pretty much 24/7, offering a variety of tournaments and rebroadcasts, and thus ends up in my "casters" category.
Notable absentees this month: Stephano (though he already promised to stream a lot this month), MarineKing, Polt, Sen, DongRaeGu, SaSe, Socke.
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.)
Remember that this graph only includes player stream numbers, and does not include caster streams or events. Or, in other words: This is only a fraction of what makes the SC2 community, and no matter how good or bad it looks, it is never a complete picture.
So we have a slight improvement over the plunge of the previous two months. The HotS hype is clearly over, and it looks like we are settling back into pre-HotS numbers. In fact, the numbers are almost identical to those from last year. That's not very bad, but it's nothing to cheer about, either.
Let's see how things develop in the coming months.
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. Nor are there any numbers available from youtube streaming.
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, WCS KR has two English language streams, and 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.
The WCS numbers look pretty stable overall. It looks like WCS NA is finally catching up on its two siblings, and despite the fact that WCS NA only offered Challenger League and the first round of Premier League, it managed to compete with the last few rounds of the OSL. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Of course, WCS EU steals the show once more, even though the numbers are down slightly from last season. Go EU!
The most interesting numbers are still to come, of course, and we're all dreading them: How many people will stay up to watch three tournament finals in three vastly different time zones? And how will the WCS finals fare against The International? As a fan, I'm pretty scared to find out about those numbers. As a guy who likes to look at numbers, I'm morbidly curious.
We will find out very soon..
Proleague vs. GSTL vs. ATC
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.
I decided to include the ATC numbers in here from here on, for hopefully obvious reasons. As with WCS EU, I am adding up the different streams for ATC as they are in different languages. Usually, there is always at least an English and a German stream available.
Proleague remains quite inconsistent with its viewership, but the overall numbers are down compared to the previous month. Perhaps it's the lack of EG-TL in the playoffs. The finals managed to get some respectable numbers, but it's clear that WCS gets far more foreign fans to watch on average.
GSTL fared even worse, though when your finals are going head-to-head with Dreamhack, you can't really expect any other result.
So that's all for this month. Hope you guys enjoyed, as always. Any kind of feedback is always welcome!
On August 05 2013 00:55 iNcontroL wrote: I had a nice peak this month .. was pretty proud of that I plan on streaming even more in this month of August.. so look to see if I can keep my word!
congrats to demuslim <3
How do you always manage to post in this thread mere minutes after I create it? :D
On August 05 2013 00:58 KnowMe wrote: im a bit surprised that im not in there. never had more viewers thanks for the list tho!
You're in the viewers*hours list at #36. About 300 viewers on average, which isn't quite enough yet to make it into the other list.
The average viewers must not be max concurrents? Because i'm hitting 400 quite often..is the average based on the average of every day of the entire month?
If so that would make sense, because if you don't stream a few days that adds a day average of 0 for that day massively bringing down your "average" for the month -_- which is not representative of the actual concurrent viewers being hit.
On August 05 2013 02:23 Faster69 wrote: Sc2 streamers get so many less viewers than other games =[
Yeah it's sad. I noticed a big drop in viewers for july every time I looked at the viewer numbers in the sidebar. Maybe it's cause it's summer and all the nerds are at the beaches now.....who am I kidding, the nerds are still inside, but just watching lol/dota instead.
On August 05 2013 01:50 avilo wrote: The average viewers must not be max concurrents? Because i'm hitting 400 quite often..is the average based on the average of every day of the entire month?
If so that would make sense, because if you don't stream a few days that adds a day average of 0 for that day massively bringing down your "average" for the month -_- which is not representative of the actual concurrent viewers being hit.
I really worry about SC2 right now, I know as for myself, I was always such a hard-core player, but I am rather dissatisfied with the way HOTS has played out from a gameplay perspective and even LoL holds more interest for me now.
On August 05 2013 02:23 Faster69 wrote: Sc2 streamers get so many less viewers than other games =[
Yeah it's sad. I noticed a big drop in viewers for july every time I looked at the viewer numbers in the sidebar. Maybe it's cause it's summer and all the nerds are at the beaches now.....who am I kidding, the nerds are still inside, but just watching lol/dota instead.
Which is strange because lol/dota are boring as hell to watch from a player stream perspective. It doesn't help that a lot of sc2 players are boring as shit when they steam. It's hard to be an sc2 fan these days, depressing week
On August 05 2013 03:37 lorestarcraft wrote: I really worry about SC2 right now, I know as for myself, I was always such a hard-core player, but I am rather dissatisfied with the way HOTS has played out from a gameplay perspective and even LoL holds more interest for me now.
On August 05 2013 02:23 Faster69 wrote: Sc2 streamers get so many less viewers than other games =[
Yeah it's sad. I noticed a big drop in viewers for july every time I looked at the viewer numbers in the sidebar. Maybe it's cause it's summer and all the nerds are at the beaches now.....who am I kidding, the nerds are still inside, but just watching lol/dota instead.
Which is strange because lol/dota are boring as hell to watch from a player stream perspective. It doesn't help that a lot of sc2 players are boring as shit when they steam. It's hard to be an sc2 fan these days, depressing week
On August 05 2013 03:37 lorestarcraft wrote: I really worry about SC2 right now, I know as for myself, I was always such a hard-core player, but I am rather dissatisfied with the way HOTS has played out from a gameplay perspective and even LoL holds more interest for me now.
It's been pretty doom and gloom for sc2 lately
They are kinda boring to watch, but more fun to play with others. That is the key issue, most likely.
On August 05 2013 03:37 lorestarcraft wrote: I really worry about SC2 right now, I know as for myself, I was always such a hard-core player, but I am rather dissatisfied with the way HOTS has played out from a gameplay perspective and even LoL holds more interest for me now.
Feels like Blizzard just took off after HotS, we still haven´t had any major patches after HotS nor any great ideas lately from Blizzard how they want to improve their franchise besides the usual "the winrates are looking good."
For me it feels that just looking forward to new maps every season isn´t interesting enough when it feels like everytime I log in to SC2 that I entered a barren wasteland. Lately watching the pro scene has become dull to me too, even having hard time getting excited for the Starleague finals and this has nothing to do with the final itself, since I´m huge Prime fan and I love to watch Maru play especially when it´s against KeSPA player that I love aswell.
On August 05 2013 01:50 avilo wrote: The average viewers must not be max concurrents? Because i'm hitting 400 quite often..is the average based on the average of every day of the entire month?
If so that would make sense, because if you don't stream a few days that adds a day average of 0 for that day massively bringing down your "average" for the month -_- which is not representative of the actual concurrent viewers being hit.
Not quite.
The average is based on every time you stream, based on 15 minute intervals. So when you do not stream your numbers are not affected at all.
However, the "average" numbers are usually lower than one would expect. You, like every other streamer, starts his stream with 0 viewers, and you (like every other streamer) slowly work yourself to your "actual" average. That is, that steady number of viewers you get eventually and that doesn't change all that much. Let's say that in your case that's about 400. So it feels like your average is 400. Why does the data say the actual average is 300? It's simply because of that early phase when you start streaming, and you have 0 viewers. 15 minutes later you have 30, perhaps. Then 100. Then 150, and so on. All that drags the actual average down.
It might sound kind of unfair, but then again, this is true for every streamer, so everyone has exactly the same disadvantage.
On August 05 2013 02:23 Faster69 wrote: Sc2 streamers get so many less viewers than other games =[
Yeah it's sad. I noticed a big drop in viewers for july every time I looked at the viewer numbers in the sidebar. Maybe it's cause it's summer and all the nerds are at the beaches now.....who am I kidding, the nerds are still inside, but just watching lol/dota instead.
Which is strange because lol/dota are boring as hell to watch from a player stream perspective. It doesn't help that a lot of sc2 players are boring as shit when they steam. It's hard to be an sc2 fan these days, depressing week
On August 05 2013 03:37 lorestarcraft wrote: I really worry about SC2 right now, I know as for myself, I was always such a hard-core player, but I am rather dissatisfied with the way HOTS has played out from a gameplay perspective and even LoL holds more interest for me now.
It's been pretty doom and gloom for sc2 lately
there's always doom and gloom in the sc2 community it feels like. 99,9% of the time it's unwarranted though.
on topic: thanks for your work. it's always interesting to read through!
On August 05 2013 03:54 skiersteve wrote: Pretty depressing, even twitch now sc2 is at 6th, behind dota,lol,wow,eve and magic the gathering lmao
While that is true, you also have to look at the actual streams.
Dota is #1 right now because The International, of course. I also get all the Dota streams from teamliquid.net, and what I found was that while the top Dota streamers get way more viewers than the top SC2 streamers, there are also way less Dota streamers out there. If I would do a top 50 Dota streamers list, the #50 player would get maybe 20 viewers on average.
Likewise, the EVE viewer numbers right now are based on a single stream. SC2, on the other hand, is a much more diverse animal in regards to streaming. There are way more streams, and there are way more streams that get a decent viewership compared to all other games (with the exception of LoL, of course).
EPT
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top%2050%202013%2007.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/top%2050%202013%2007x.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%2007.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/WCS%202013%2007.png)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/Proleague%20GSTL%20ATC%202013%2007.png)
