2022 Asian Games viewership was carried by community casters in Dota 2 and League of Legends
The 2022 Asian Games finally began on the 23rd of September, 2023, after a year-long delay due to the pandemic. The Asian Games is an Olympic-style event, with players representing their respective countries and competing to win a gold, silver, or bronze medal. The sporting event features athletics, boxing, and more. In 2018, the games began hosting esports events and the 2022 iteration expanded on this.
The games featured five different “Mind sports”, which includes Chess, Go, and Esports. The esports events at the 2022 Asian Games are as follows: Arena of Valor, Dota 2, Dream Three Kingdoms 2, EA Sports FC Online, League of Legends, Street Fighter V, and Peacekeeper Elite (the Chinese version of PUBG Mobile). Originally, Hearthstone was also planned as an event at the Games, but due to Hearthstone’s withdrawal from China, the event had to be cancelled.
The sporting event was opened in Hangzhou, China, by Xi Jinping himself, but how did the esports events of the games perform in terms of live-streaming viewership?
2022 Asian Games Viewership
Of all seven events to take place at the 2022 Asian Games, League of Legends and Dota 2 were by far the two most popular events. These two disciplines stood out from the remaining events as the most successful disciplines in terms of viewership at the games.
League of Legends
League of Legends was the most-watched and most popular event of the games, and the discipline collected over 444K hours of watch time throughout its short broadcasting time. The discipline received 22.6K average concurrent viewers throughout the event, but this viewership was extremely top-heavy in terms of distribution.
Of the 13 matches broadcasted at the event, 10 of these received fewer Average Viewers than the event overall. In fact, of these 10 matches, 6 received fewer than 3.2K Average Viewers. The most popular matches of the event were the playoff stage matches, which saw Korea come out victorious ahead of Chinese Taipei to claim the gold medal.
The third-place match between China and Vietnam was the most popular match of the event, but the majority of the viewership for this event came from Vietnamese audiences, not Chinese. The match between China and Vietnam reached 146K Peak Viewers and managed to average over 70K concurrent viewers throughout the two-hour match. The League of Legends event was heavily supported by Vietnamese community casters, who were the most-watched streamers of the event.
Dota 2
Unable to best League of Legends, Dota 2 was still the second-most-watched event in the esports section of the games. Vietnamese audience interest was much lower for Dota 2 than in comparison to League of Legends, but the Dota 2 matches received far more viewership from English-speaking audiences.
In total, the Dota 2 event at the 2022 Asian Games received 337.2K hours of watch time throughout a similar broadcasting time to the League of Legends event. However, despite showing a similar Airtime to the League of Legends event, the Dota 2 section of the games live-streamed only four games in total.
The event broadcasted the Semifinals, the Grand Finals, and the Bronze Final between Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan. One similarity between League of Legends and Dota 2 at the event, was how top-heavy the viewership distribution was. The Grand Finals between Mongolia and China and the Semifinals between China and Malaysia were by far the most-watched matches of the event; these two matches alone generated over 300K Hours Watched.
Although the majority of the viewership for the event was generated by Chinese-language broadcasts, the most popular and most-watched streamer for the event was Bkop. Bkop is an American Dota 2 commentator and community caster, and his coverage of the Dota 2 event was accountable for over 132K hours of watch time and of the 77.9K Peak Viewers, 26.6K of these viewers came directly from Bkop. The American was also the only broadcaster to be live for the entirety of the Dota 2 event, with over 20 hours of Airtime and 1M+ Views on his broadcasts.
For the remainder of the events at the games, viewership was low. Of the five other events hosted, only one was able to achieve more than 10% of the watch time that Dota 2 generated. The EA Sports FC Online event received 57K Hours Watched, more than its rival events but not in the same league as the two MOBA events we have looked at. Firstly, let’s see how the esports section of the 2022 Asian Games performed overall.
2022 Asian Games Esports Viewership
In total, the esports division of the 2022 Asian Games received 866.4K hours of watch time. Sadly, the viewership statistics for the previous 2018 Asian Games where the esports division debuted are not available to us: meaning no dynamics can be drawn for viewership growth or decline.
League of Legends was the most-watched discipline of the Asian Games 2022, accounting for more than half of the total watch time collected by the games. Dota 2 enjoyed the next-largest portion of the watch time distribution, followed by the EA Sports FC Online event, which received 57K hours of watch time.
Smaller events at the Asian Games 2022 were not able to draw significant attention, such as the Street Fighter V or Dream Three Kingdoms 2 events, which received roughly 500 Average Viewers each. Excluding Dota 2, League of Legends, and to a lesser extent the EA Sports FC Online events, the 2022 Asian Games struggled to garner viewership.
By the end of the esports division of the games, the various broadcasts for the events meant that the games received 2.49M Views in total. Important to note, that the Views figure does not represent individual viewers for the broadcast, and a singular viewer could contribute multiple views to the event.
Viewership for each event at the Asian Games 2022, by Hours Watched and Peak Viewers
Looking at a direct comparison of the viewership that each event of the 2022 games received, it's clear how instrumental Dota 2 and League of Legends were to the event’s viewership. Curiously, disciplines such as Street Fighter V, which are hugely popular in Asian regions like Japan, struggled to bring in any viewership at all.
A key reason for this low viewership is the lack of community casters at these events. Dota 2 and League of Legends were mainly popular due to the community casters supporting the event, but the remaining 5 events received little to no support from community casters. The Street Fighter V event was broadcast on three channels total, with no community casters coming to support the event. This is typical for most of the remaining disciplines that achieved low viewership.
The Asian Games 2022 was a moderate success for the organisers, with high viewership and audience exposure coming from two of the bigger games at the event, but the viewership trail for these events leads back to community casters. Community casters are an integral part of esports viewership, and oftentimes some of the most-watched channels to cover esports events.
The Asian Games failed to attract community casters to some of its disciplines, which caused the top-heavy viewership distribution as only the events that were covered by community casters achieved substantial success. Although a disappointing year for the event, the Asian Games has proved that there is an audience for its events if the power of community casters is tapped into.
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