GigaOM » esports

TwitchTV hits 12m uniques and 1000 partners in November

Ryan Lawler — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:00:43 +0000

The latest update from Justin.tv live streamed gaming site TwitchTV is in, and it shows pretty impressive growth. It’s only been about six months since TwitchTV launched, but it now boasts more than 12 million unique viewers per month, with visits to TwitchTV increasing about 15 percent per month since launch.

While trying to attract viewers to the site, TwitchTV has also been busy building an ecosystem of partners to stream live video game content. The site now has more than 1,000 content partners that it shares advertising revenue with. Its partners include major competitive eSports leagues like the Electronic Sports League (ESL), IGN Pro League (IPL), Major League Gaming (MLG), and North American Star League (NASL), as well as independent celebrity gamers and game publishers interested in demoing new products. Finally, the company announced that it’s received 80,000 downloads of its iPhone mobile application, which was introduced just a few weeks ago.

As we’ve noted before, eSports is becoming a big business, particularly as new leagues have emerged to live stream video game tournaments. As one of the first sites to cater specifically to the eSports market, TwitchTV is poised to ride the wave of growth.

Image courtesy (CC-BY-SA) of Flickr user ECL X-Series Liverpool

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Super Bowl of eSports proves more popular than cable

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:07:00 +0000

The numbers are in, and Major League Gaming‘s Pro Circuit championship tournament in Providence, R.I. proved to be one of the bigger events streamed on the Internet. The three-day tournament, which took place a few weeks ago and is like the Super Bowl for gamers, boasted streaming records for the eSports league.

MLG reported a total of 3.6 million hours of video consumed over the course of the tournament, with peak viewership of 241,000 users watching at the same time. And those viewers were totally engrossed in the gameplay: Average viewing time was north of three hours per viewer, according to MLG. Videos were streamed to viewers in more than 175 different countries, with U.S., Germany, Canada, Sweden and the U.K. leading the way.

To put that into perspective: When CBS Sports live streamed the matchup between No. 1 and No. 2 ranked NCAA football teams LSU and Alabama earlier this season, it reported just 214,560 unique viewers during the game. All of which is why the league could boast, in the infographic below, that it drew more 18- to 24-year-old viewers during the three-day tournament than cable networks like MTV, FX, Comedy Central and TBS.

For eSports enthusiasts, events like MLG’s Pro Circuit tournaments add a new way for them to enjoy games, even if they’re not playing themselves. And they’re becoming more popular: The tournament in Providence capped off a successful season for MLG, in which it streamed a total 15 million hours of video over six different Pro Circuit events, which is a 225-percent increase over video viewed during the 2010 season.

With persistent broadband that lets viewers watch events like MLG’s Pro Circuit in high-definition video, we expect events like this to continue to grow, especially as viewers can tune in on more devices. Watch out for eSports to become an even bigger business in 2012.

Image courtesy (CC-BY-SA) of Flickr user ECL X-Series Liverpool

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Live streaming the Super Bowl of eSports

Ryan Lawler — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:34:45 +0000

While previous attempts to broadcast professional gamers have stalled, the eSports market might finally have reached its tipping point, thanks to the ability to live stream tournaments online. And its Super Bowl moment might happen this weekend, as Major League Gaming live streams the final tournament of its pro season.

This weekend, some of the best gamers in the world — as well as thousands of their fans — will converge on Providence, R.I., for the conclusion of Major League Gaming’s Pro Circuit Season. MLG will be giving away more than $600,000 in prizes during the three-day tournament to players that excel in games like StarCraft II, Halo: Reach, Call of Duty: Black Ops and League of Legends. The competition wraps up a nationwide tour of MLG’s eSports league, which had previously held live competitions in Dallas; Columbus, Ohio; Anaheim, Calif.; Raleigh, N.C. and Orlando, Fla.

While there will be thousands attending the tournament in person, it will also be live streamed in 720p HD video. The weekend-long competition is expected to draw millions of viewers with peak periods likely exceeding more than 200,000 concurrent viewers tuning in. MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni told us in a phone interview, “Our spectator numbers are great. Streams are going up with every event, and we’re constantly breaking records in terms of the number of people showing up online.”

Together, the last four events in the tour resulted in more than 11.1 million hours of video consumed, with each registering record numbers of online streams for MLG. The last event, held in Orlando, topped 180,000 concurrent viewers at its peak, with 3.2 million hours of video consumed altogether.

Just to put that into perspective: When No. 1 and No. 2 ranked NCAA football teams LSU and Alabama met earlier this season, CBSSports.com reported just 214,560 unique viewers for its live stream of the game. So getting almost as many viewers to tune in simultaneously to watch eSports as you can get to show up over the entire course of the biggest live-streamed college football game of the season is a huge accomplishment.

Part of the growth of eSports in recent years comes from the accessibility of live streams: Growth in broadband means that it’s easier than ever for viewers to tune in, when they might not have been able to before. Previous attempts to take eSports mainstream largely stalled due to the inability to get matches on TV. But leagues like MLG no longer need to go through traditional distributors to find huge audiences. They can now live stream the matches themselves, which not only brings eSports to more places than it could be seen before, it does so with video quality that wasn’t previously available.

Growth is also due in part to the massive success of games like StarCraft II, which has quickly established itself as one of the most popular eSports titles. Dustin Browder, game director for StarCraft II, attributes that popularity to building the game with eSports in mind from the very beginning.

“Almost every decision we made for StarCraft II was around what it would be like for eSports,” Browder said. That includes limiting the number of game pieces that can be used, while making it easy to highlight difference in player skill during eSports broadcasts. There’s also an element of not trying to do too much: Browder gave an example of muting graphic effects so as not to overwhelm gameplay as it’s being watched.

All of which is adding up to eSports becoming a huge market, as more players compete and more viewers tune in to watch them. We expect that trend to continue, and eSports leagues like MLG, to benefit hugely by bringing the gaming community together.

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