Overwatch League Draws 10.8 Million Viewers
| Tags: Overwatch
| Author Corey Pollack
The Overwatch League (OWL) finals which were played over two days, had an estimated 10.8 million viewers, states Blizzard. The finals were played at Barclays Center in Brooklyn between the London Spitfire and Philadelphia Fusion.
The 10.8 million viewers is the total counted up from all broadcasters including ESPN, ABC, Twitch, and the Chinese networks. The Overwatch League was reluctant to call the 10.8 million viewers one of a kind viewers, since there's not a simple method to truly guarantee the viewers are one of a kind. The reason being the same viewer could have the Twitch stream up while watching on ESPN, but we find that situation to be quite unlikely. These numbers appear high but if you look at some past eSports tournaments such as last years LoL Championships, the numbers make sense. The LoL Championships had 30 million unique views with over 11 million concurrent viewers during the peak.
It has also been circulating, although speculation, that the North American numbers for Twitch and ESPN are roughly 500,000 while the majority of the views are from Asia.
The Overwatch League continues to surpass expectations and is growing in popularity from both the public and investors. Since the end of the season there has already been two new teams added and likely more to come. To date, OWL has had one of the most successful first years of any major sport.
Corey is a team member of one of the world's largest esports organizations. Corey is also the founder of Wave Digital Media, one of Canada's 60 fastest growing companies. You can learn more about Corey via our About page.