Blizzard says that, between its official streaming partners and in-person attendance, the opening weekend of its city-based Overwatch League attracted over 10 million views.
While it isn’t specified if those 10 million views represent unique viewers, the strong burst of interest surrounding Blizzard’s own Overwatch eSports league is hard to deny and goes to show the strong pull the event’s unique structure has to its viewership.
Blizzard’s Overwatch League notably takes on a structure unfamiliar to existing eSports events by mimicking the city-based team structure traditionally favored by athletics leagues.
With 12 teams hosted across 3 continents, it seems that Blizzard’s hope is that local arms of the Overwatch community will tune in to support their favored city.
By Blizzard’s count, the opening day of the event had an average audience of 408,000 per minute while the full week averaged 280,000 viewers per minute. The company enthusiastically notes that its own numbers don’t reflect individuals sharing a screen at a viewing party or the in-person attendees at the venue itself.
One match in particular between the Dallas Fuel and Seoul Dynasty teams attracted the most number of concurrent viewers across Twitch and other streaming partners with 437,000 peak viewers.