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Group stage action for the League of Legends World Championship helped the title surpass 20M hours watched.
Meanwhile, a unique event in Fortnite that involved the game effectively shutting down caused a boost in viewership for the title despite no one being able to actually play.
Additionally, Apex Legends managed to stay in the top 10 despite many influencers moving away from the title after being paid to promote a new season for the battle royale game.
The following content is ranked according to the total number of hours watched on Twitch from Monday to the following Sunday, with data compiled using TEO Access.
New World Order
The World Championship (Worlds 2019) for League of Legends just opened play for its group stage and the increase it generated for the game is staggering.
Prior to this past week, LoL spent most of the summer posting fewer than 20M hours watched per week, and this week’s 24.6M hours watched marks the first time a game has eclipsed 20M hours watched for a week since World of Warcraft had more than 24M following the release of WoW Classic.
While Worlds 2019 began two weeks ago, the tournament opened up with a pair of play-in rounds that didn’t generate nearly the same level of appeal as the recently started group stage. A major factor in that viewership boost comes from the popularity of high-profile teams that did not need to participate in play-in rounds.
Black Hole Sun
Fortnite may have been the most-watched content on Twitch in 2018, but this year has been a different story. However, with a recent in-game “event,” Fortnite appears to be generating hype for an upcoming release of content that is typically referred to as a “season.”
At the end of the weekend, Fortnite servers shut down and players who logged into the game were met with a black screen that appears to have something akin to a black hole or eclipse in the center.
Despite people not being able to play Fortnite, streamers have been generating strong viewership on Twitch for the past day as gamers tune in to Twitch to try to theorize what has happened to Fortnite and what the future holds for the game.
On Sunday, when the event started, Fortnite viewership shot up to more than 8M hours watched. Prior to Sunday, Fortnite didn’t have more than 1.5M hours watched a single day during the week.
Staying Alive?
Apex Legends saw viewership growth revolving around the release of new content during the first week of October as EA sponsored the streams of numerous broadcasters as a way to promote the game’s third “season.”
Despite losing airtime from many of those influencers shortly after their sponsored streams were up, Apex Legends has managed to stay in the top 10 this week with nearly 4M hours watched. While that viewership isn’t strong enough to put it in the upper echelon of games on Twitch, it’s a significant increase in exposure compared to the viewership the game has been generating prior to EA’s sponsored streams and content release.
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