Overwatch League Registers 10 Million Viewers in First Week
Blizzard's recent big push in promoting their Overwatch League, ahead of its inaugural season, looks to have paid off handsomely. The company announced on Thursday, Jan. 18, that the league has already tallied 10 million viewers in its first week.
The very first season of the Overwatch League kicked off in Los Angeles last week, with 12 permanent teams as part of the first round. After four days of matches, Blizzard reports that across all their streaming channels and networks, 10 million fans have tuned in to watch, according to Gamespot.
That's just watching the accounts logged in to the Twitch streams, as well as those registered for Activision's own Major League Gaming channel. The figure also accounts for registered users overseas, including international partners like ZhanQi TV, NetEase CC and Panda TV in China.
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The figure could be much higher, given that a good number of "Overwatch" fans are watching together while sharing the same streaming account. The first day saw its peak with an exciting match between Seoul Dynasty and Dallas Fuel, when Twitch and MLG streams saw a record user number of 437,000 watching together at one point.
Seoul Dynasty will go on to the second week of the first Overwatch League with an undefeated 3 wins and zero losses, to sit at the top spot of the league standings alongside the New York Excelsior.
The standings are a long way from being settled, though, with dozens of matches scheduled for the next stretch of the 20-week regular season. Each team will have to earn their wins in a grueling season of 40 matches, all the way until June, as Tech Radar points out.
It's a great start for the Overwatch League, overall, as numbers are expected to pick up sometime in the Playoffs stages later in July, according to the official schedule.
