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Nielsen: The top 5 most followed esports in the US, UK, France, and Germany

N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
You'll remember Nielsen best as being the TV ratings people. They split out PC exclusives and multi-platform games.

To note, they seem to be including people who watch eSports once a quarter or so as eSports fans, so something like one major tournament might skew the numbers.

esports_nielsenrlpuq.png


Also, here's a gender breakdown for the curious:

esports_nielsen_gendedeur2.png


Source: http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/...ads/2017-reports/nielsen-esports-playbook.pdf
 
This is just people playing those games that are big e-sport titles, right? Not actually the following in terms of watching and attending big profile tournaments? Because else those ranking make no sense.
 
"Hearthstone: Heroes of the WarCraft"

nice

I can totally see how this happened, but still, nice
 
Krosia said:
This is just people playing those games that are big e-sport titles, right? Not actually the following in terms of watching and attending big profile tournaments? Because else those ranking make no sense.
Click to expand...

This is presumably watching esports streams judging by the context of the PDF. To be clear, they're including anyone who watches an eSports thing like once a quarter as an eSports fan.
 
What does follow mean in this instance? Playing the game, watching streams or simply stating that you follow the esport?
 
Curious how that console data is parsed, since at least based on tournament turn-outs/frequency and general populations, Melee and Sm4sh tend to appear to be bigger scenes than SF (and certainly much more so when combined). They have a lower absolute peak but they have multiple very large tournaments per year and have their own EVO-like majors.

Nirolak said:
This is presumably watching esports streams judging by the context of the PDF. To be clear, they're including anyone who watches an eSports thing like once a month as an eSports fan.
Click to expand...

And with that I am even more interested in how the data is parsed, pretty sure Melee and Sm4sh also pull in move consistent viewership than SF.
 
Vena said:
Curious how that console data is parsed, since at least based on tournament turn-outs/frequency and general populations, Melee and Sm4sh tend to appear to be bigger scenes than SF (and certainly much more so when combined). They have a lower absolute peak but they have multiple very large tournaments per year and have their own EVO-like majors.



And with that I am even more interested in how the data is parsed, pretty sure Melee and Sm4sh also pull in move consistent viewership than SF.
Click to expand...

I'm looking at this again, and it might be quarterly or annual, so something like SF5's EVO stream might be getting a way broader viewership that's skewing the numbers, or the people watching Smash are not as heavily from the US, UK, France, or Germany.

If we assume annual, something like Blizzcon is going to cause an astronomical breadth increase for Blizzard games.
 
Do Battle Royale games have potential as eSports, or is it viewed as more of a casual thing? Also somewhat surprised by lack of Overwatch.

Edit: Nevermind for OW, second chart.
 
Nirolak said:
This is presumably watching esports streams judging by the context of the PDF. To be clear, they're including anyone who watches an eSports thing like once a month as an eSports fan.
Click to expand...

Ah wait they not only showed pc separately, but also fully excluded pc from multiplat (just call in console & mobile then...). Then it could be fine. Did they compare both pc and multiplat later in a graphic? Wonder how way far behind console e-sports is compared to CS:GO, LoL and Dota 2.

But man, still not sure. FIFA and CoD are massive but their e-sports following is just forgettable.
 
Nirolak said:
I'm looking at this again, and it might be quarterly or annual, so something like SF5's EVO stream might be getting a way broader viewership that's skewing the numbers, or the people watching Smash are not as heavily from the US, UK, France, or Germany.

If we assume annual, something like Blizzcon is going to cause an astronomical breadth increase for Blizzard games.
Click to expand...

Smash is definitely further flung on reach than the limits of those countries, including a major scene in Japan, but the scenes themselves across such major timezones are generally independent outside of the majors.

But if it is quarterly, I could see how it would skew against the broader annual trends.
 
Halo? I didn't think Halo e-sports was even top 10 to be honest. Thats surprising hopefully it doesn't effect arena (or even Warzone) that much more than it already has in Halo 6.
 
Smash in general actually doesn't attract, outside of EVO amazing viewernumbers for tournaments. Melee on average is higher but still way lower then it potentially could be if Nintendo supported the scene more.

CapcomFighters with each tournament often has 30k viewers regardless where it is in the world.
 
Synth said:
Halo's about as PC as Counter Strike is console though.
Click to expand...


Nah they just threw in all consoles and mobile together so they can seperate those from pc, else pc would dominate the whole thing. So multiplat actually just means Halo on Xbox and CoD on PS4, etc.
 
WestEgg said:
Do Battle Royale games have potential as eSports, or is it viewed as more of a casual thing?
Click to expand...

I think they could in terms of viewership rather than prize money. They're very easy to follow and there's the massive 'unpredictability' with 100 players rather than 8 teams. Assuming they went with solo over squads (but they could go with both).
 
When they say eSports do they mean like tournaments and things associated with leagues/tournaments or would like random Twitch streams of pone person just playing the game count as an eSport stream?

If it's only like tournament stuff, I had no clue Fifa was that big on the scene.
 
Seems crazy to me that more people are watching Halo in 2017 than Overwatch.

Had no idea it was still so big competitively.
 
Seiniyta said:
Smash in general actually doesn't attract, outside of EVO amazing viewernumbers for tournaments. Melee on average is higher but still way lower then it potentially could be if Nintendo supported the scene more.

CapcomFighters with each tournament often has 30k viewers regardless where it is in the world.
Click to expand...

Yea, I was going to mention, everytime I check on the weekends whenever a tournament is going on, SFV is largely consistently the top viewed FG.
 
That Overwatch League is looking more and more like a potential flop. That games time in the spotlight has come and gone, they took to long to get this thing rolling and interest has stagnated. Can not believe itÂ’s not #1 in cross platform.
 
Seiniyta said:
Smash in general actually doesn't attract, outside of EVO amazing viewernumbers for tournaments. Melee on average is higher but still way lower then it potentially could be if Nintendo supported the scene more.

CapcomFighters with each tournament often has 30k viewers regardless where it is in the world.
Click to expand...

I'd need to see data and frequency. This is *some* of Smash's tracked data for Sm4sh only (Melee is even higher, and the combined is obvious): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W3iMEMPuOsyVMsp_J3qrZCO1jqPNNOnECjrBly3WKNs/edit#gid=0

Smash has much more frequent, higher turn-out tournaments than SF. Weeklies I have no idea how to even track and compare since Smash has weeklies all over the place.

And here is 2016 Data for both Melee and Sm4sh: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...WSdTwwf2Jvhq9ZBaZtZYi4-OE/edit#gid=2137314040
 
Krosia said:
Nah they just threw in all consoles and mobile together so they can seperate those from pc, else pc would dominate the whole thing. So multiplat actually just means Halo on Xbox and CoD on PS4, etc.
Click to expand...

Yea. That'd make sense.
 
scoobs said:
That Overwatch League is looking more and more like a potential flop. That games time in the spotlight has come and gone, they took to long to get this thing rolling and interest has stagnated. Can not believe itÂ’s not #1 in cross platform.
Click to expand...
OW is just such a bad spectator game for casuals.
 
Vena said:
I'd need to see data and frequency. This is *some* of Smash's tracked data for Sm4sh only (Melee is even higher, and the combined is obvious): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W3iMEMPuOsyVMsp_J3qrZCO1jqPNNOnECjrBly3WKNs/edit#gid=0

Smash has much more frequent, higher turn-out tournaments than SF. Weeklies I have no idea how to even track and compare since Smash has weeklies all over the place.

And here is 2016 Data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...WSdTwwf2Jvhq9ZBaZtZYi4-OE/edit#gid=2137314040
Click to expand...

Doesn't that 2016 basically show why SFV is listed? A lot of that Smash peak viewership in 2017 is lower than numbers SFV gets for it's tournies.
 
scoobs said:
That Overwatch League is looking more and more like a potential flop. That games time in the spotlight has come and gone, they took to long to get this thing rolling and interest has stagnated. Can not believe it's not #1 in cross platform.
Click to expand...

Its gonna basically catter to NA viewtimes too which ... well .. isn't so hot
 
Halo's probably up there for the championship finales. That's the only time the competitive league has viewership (like 80-100k viewers).


Usually the normal league streams only have around 5-10k viewers.
 
Renekton said:
WTF COD and Overwatch.

Those are hard to follow for a spectator.
Click to expand...

I actually watched some of the recent Infinite Warfare tournament and it's actually really easy to tell what's going on.

Though considering I've played a fair bit of it might color my watching experience.
 
Mostly impressed how StarCraft has remained relevant in so many markets.

Stat about Fifa players being much more casual than others really rains on the idea that these players are just as hardcore about the games they love..
 
Glad to see Heroes of the Storm and SC2 on the list at all. I thought both were pretty much non-starts... though compared to the big 3, I guess they still pretty much are.
 
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