The ESL Pro League has provided an insider look into how players that are not included into the major list of players can still become popular on Twitch, a streaming service, and get their views for CS:GO. In particular, CS:GO, which is a first-person shooting game by Valve, is now considered an esport, which keeps getting the most popular game in the industry.
The championship where CS:GO players compete to win the title of the Major champion is held twice a year and gathers everyone interested in esports fascinated to watch the fight. It is also the time when CSGO match betting becomes the most heated. Basically, the esports tournaments are as addictive as competitions in any other kind of sports. There are many events held by third parties to feature the game, yet only a few allow players to win the title of a Major.
Still, a third-party event called the ESL Pro League has managed to gather the greatest number of viewers and fans. The ninth season of the ESL Pro League has been hosted, which follows the tradition of organizing the championship since the first half of 2015. While the league’s seasons are not included in the Major schedule for the esport, they have made the league one of the leading watched streaming ones, sometimes reaching the number of 4 million hours watched.
The Statistics of Twitch views
In fact, the statistics on how many views the non-Major league has been getting on Twitch are fascinating. For example, Intel Extreme Masters XIII Katowice played over the period of February to March 2019 outreached the number of hours viewed on Twitch for two days in a year when compared to those of ESL Pro League, particularly the last season of the league. This makes the non-Major viewership practically as huge as the CS:GO Major one when referring to the numbers.
Unfortunately, the statistics are only available for this year. The reason is that the previous seasons of the ESL Pro League were streamed via Facebook only, so it’s impossible to make a comparison with the viewership over the previous seasons to assess the growth of the streaming success. Thankfully, an agreement with Facebook reached at the beginning of 2019 made it possible to transfer the streaming to other platforms, such as Twitch. In fact, the freedom in streaming the event made it appear on YouTube again, where it was streamed in 2017 exclusively.
As for Season 9 of ESL Pro League hosted in the second half of June this year and streamed on Twitch, it reached the point of 3.6 million hours. As a result, the team list exceeded to accept 16 more teams in each region to take part in the event, as well as more matched are now hosted in the studio and streamed online.
During the grand finals lasting two hours, the streaming of ESL reached the peak consisting of 224.000 views, with having an average of 70.000 views over the weekend on the streams, which made a total of 8 to 10 hours on air.
The secret of the stable huge numbers in viewership of ESL Pro League streams is that such top organizations as G2 Esports and Team Liquid were attracted to them. The attention of these major viewers helped the streaming to get shared and generate thousands of views. Eventually, the league managed to enter the environment of Twitch by making the right deals on media rights after being absent from the platform for two years.
Today, the league seems to have always been broadcasted on Twitch without any break that it took for the past couple of years. And the fact that it’s non-Major hardly matters in the viewership the league generates.
