EPT
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:
![[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)
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
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8028950/TL/WCS%202014%2001.png)
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
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028950/TL/Proleague%202014%2001.png)
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
- Top 100 streamers of 2013 (+ Top 50 of December)
- Top 50 streamers in November 2013
- Top 50 streamers in October 2013 (+ WCS numbers)
- Top 50 streamers in September 2013 (+ WCS numbers)
- Top 50 streamers in August 2013 (plus WCS numbers)
- Top 50 streamers in July 2013 (plus WCS numbers)
- Top 50 streamers in June 2013 (plus WCS numbers)
- 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)
