Last month saw the release of Heart of the Swarm, and I'm sure you all want to know what that did to the viewership numbers for the SC2 streams, so I'll get right to it!
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 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.
For live stream data, go and visit soiii's site http://sc2streamnumbers.com/ where you can check out detailed graphs of stream viewers of every stream. (Thread here). Please check it out, it's pretty awesome. I thought about doing something like that at some point, but soiii did it way better and prettier than I could've ever done.
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.
I have retired the HotS percentage bar. Teamliquid doesn't allow streamers to make the distinction between HotS and WoL any longer, and so far there's no need for that feature, anyhow: Absolutely nobody streams WoL.
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:
UPDATE: Added RotterdaM (minus recent ATC cast)! Apologies for overlooking him.
Stray observations
- So many new viewers! Rejoice, Starcraft 2 isn't dead yet! We barely had one player peaking 10000 viewers in a month previously, and last month we had four. More on overall HotS numbers later.
- Destiny's back! Well, not really, but he played some SC2 again, and he's still pretty popular. Initially it looked like he would end up taking the #1 spot, as he was the first to crack the 10000 viewer mark, but in the following days he got some pretty good competition. Still, that's not a bad result at all for a retired player.
- While we're at it: It should be noted that a lot of players decided to try out (and stream) the Single Player campaign first. That's not quite what I intended this list to be for originally, but since this is a one-time (Well, one out of two times, actually) occurrence, I don't see a reason to do much about it.
- The biggest loss this time around is clearly Jaedong. He's been in a steady decline ever since he started streaming (and dominating the list). While nearly everyone got lots of new viewers, he lost about 1300 last month. If you're one of those 1300, please let us know why you stopped watching him. I'm really curious about this one.
- On the other end of the spectrum, we have some players who gained a significant number of new viewers, even considering the HotS launch: Ret went from an average viewership of 890 up to 2150, Catz went from 530 to 1630, and Incontrol and Sase also gained quite a number of new viewers. Congrats!
- With MajOr streaming again, this marks the first time a KeSPA contracted player has ever appeared on one of the top 50 lists! (And, to my knowledge, the first time a KeSPA player has ever streamed SC2 on teamliquid, period. Correct me on this one if I'm wrong.)
- I have no numbers on Artosis' stream, since he apparently wasn't listed on teamliquid. Sorry.
- Notable absentees this month: MMA, DRG, SuperNova, HasuObs, Leenock, HyuN, Goody, Babyknight, Ganzi,
ForGG. - 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.)
We all expected a raise in total viewership, and we got one. But while the raise is significant compared to the previous month, it's barely noteworthy compared to April nearly one year ago. So that's cause for concern, right?
Wrong. Heart of the Swarm was released on the 12th, and the beta has ended by the 1st. So not a soul (other than the guys at IEM, of course) could stream HotS during that time. The bar that you see is the result of roughly 2/3 of a month's worth of streaming. So, basically, imagine that bar to be 1/3 larger than it actually is to get a more accurate image. Or just have a look at this:
This is the same data, but broken down by day and not by month. And while the last graph shows a too bleak picture of HotS stream viewership, this one goes into the other direction: The WoL numbers you see here are lower than usual, since pretty much nobody cared about WoL any more days before HotS was released, and barely anyone streamed. Still, this shows a much more accurate representation of what happened once HotS was released: Loads of viewers! And, much more importantly, loads of viewers that kept watching streams all throughout the month.
With the exception of MLG, that is. That's the bump at the 16th and 17th. That's when there were over 100.000 people watching MLG... and when there was literally zero featured SC2 streamers online at times. Zero. Nada. They've all been watching MLG, too, presumably. And so did you.
Let's wait and see if the high numbers continue this month.
Proleague vs. GSL
Please take the GSL numbers below with a large grain of salt. The numbers below only reflect the twitch.tv viewer numbers, and do not count viewers that have watched GSL straight from gomtv.net. In addition, as always, the numbers below only reflect the official English streams of the corresponding events, and say nothing about Korean viewerships.
Still no GSTL viewers. Sorry!
Not a whole lot to say, since there wasn't a whole lot going on last month. The Code S finals had slightly less viewers than the Ro4, but, as I said above, that can have many reasons, and is in no way an indication that they were less popular.
So that's all for this month.
Hope you guys enjoyed, as always. Any kind of feedback is always welcome!
Older entries
- 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)