Community Casting Overview: Valorant, PUBG Mobile, League of Legends

The days when enthusiasts and ordinary gamers broadcast esports tournaments are long gone. Now professional studios with brilliant commentators are running the show. And after many years amateur esports streams are still alive, and they are not only diversifying, but also actively competing with official broadcasts. We often cover the phenomenon of community casts in various disciplines and today we take a look at some popular titles — League of Legends, Valorant and PUBG Mobile — and also see how community casting influences the tournaments popularity in these games.

Valorant

The esports scene of Riot's game is relatively new, as is the shooter itself. Since the beginning of this year, watch time of VCT regular season matches in the most popular regions has totaled 28 million Hours Watched on community broadcasts, just slightly less than the official streaming which amassed 35.8 million Hours Watched.

In EMEA qualifiers, official broadcasts accumulated the vast majority of watch time, 7.9 million Hours Watched, while amateur broadcasts collected 1.7 million Hours Watched. This is explained by the fact that there are not many popular streamers in the region, who are capable of accumulating a considerable audience with Valorant. The only one to mention is a former League of Legends pro player from Turkey — wtcN.

Much more popular were the unofficial broadcasts during the Challengers in Japan. With so many former pro players of various shooters enjoying Riot Games' latest release, 26% of Japan Challengers' matches Hours Watched were generated by community casters such as fps_shaka, StylishNoob4 and k4sen.

A striking difference with the European region is seen in North America. Unofficial broadcasts accumulate more than 56% of NA Challengers Hours Watched. American viewers traditionally like to watch a variety of shooters, and when they are streamed by popular content creators such as shroud, tarik or TenZ, the streams are definitely on the way to success. During the international VCT Masters Reykjavik tournament, creators from North America were also extremely active. The community streamers generated 16.9 million Hours Watched, which is more than 50% of the total tournament figures.

The most popular Valorant community caster was Canadian Sentinels pro player TenZ with 113K Peak Viewers, retired CS:GO pro player tarik accumulated 110K Peak Viewers, and wtcN took third place by the metric with 108K PV. Top five is rounded out by two streamers from Japan, k4sen and StylishNoob4, who gathered 66K and 65K Peak Viewers, respectively.

Japanese streamers showed good results by Average Viewers. Fps_shaka, a former PUBG pro player, held 30K Average Viewers. Kuzuha, a Vtuber, also was in the top, with his match broadcasts gathering 32K Average Viewers.

League of Legends

The legendary MOBA has been entertaining its fans for years with all sorts of tournaments. Unlike the younger brainchild of Riot, the main audience here is gathered by the official broadcasts, but some leagues still receive a significant increase in viewers thanks to the content creators' streams.

Most prominent streamers are becoming more and more common in esports. For example, kamet0 is not only one of the top streamers in France, but also the owner of the Karmine Corp team that plays in the LFL. Similarly, Spanish showman and streamer ibai has his own organization KOI that plays in the LVP Superliga. Thanks to such creators, local leagues can compete with many interregional tournaments in the LoL esports ecosystem.

The most popular community caster was ibai, with the highest peak audience — 212K viewers and the highest Average Viewers count — 125K. Kamet0 also gathered a considerable audience; his Peak Viewers number reached 90K. Among Korean commentators, we should also mention lol_woolf, the content creator of the famous T1 team, who accumulated 81K Peak Viewers. Besides Twitch, Korean streamers Ishooo and phonics1 also gathered a large audience on the Afreecatv with 137K and 117K Peak Viewers, respectively. Their broadcasts of Korean LCK league matches accumulated 33% of the total Hours Watched.

PUBG Mobile

Tencent's Mobile Battle Royale tournaments attracted very significant audience from community casters as they generated 9.6 million Hours Watched. But due to the unusual structure of PUBG Mobile's professional season, specifically the existence of multiple leagues, meaningful contribution from community casting was only seen in the most popular and biggest tournaments.

For example, the percentage of community casters' streams contribution to HW in a regional league in Turkey was 1.8 million, or 33% of the total number, while a regional league in Brazil accumulated 340K Hours Watched, or just over 50% of the total. Community streams in Indonesia and South Asia, although not beating the official broadcasts, still gathered 46% and 49% of total Hours Watched, respectively.

Ryzen, an Indonesian PUBG Mobile pro player, who took a break from playing on the pro scene earlier this year, became the leader by Hours Watched amongst community casters. One of his PUBG Mobile Pro League Indonesia Spring 2022 broadcasts accumulated 91K concurrent viewers. Barış G was the only non-Indonesian representative in the top most popular community casters. The storyteller, showman and journalist from Turkey streamed PUBG Mobile Pro League Turkey Spring 2022 matches and simultaneously gathered 81K viewers.

Only one Twitch representative managed to show significant results — Brazilian streamer loud_coringa had 23K Average Viewers during PUBG Mobile Pro League Brazil Spring 2022.

General Comparison

Community streams make up a significant proportion of the audience in some relatively young disciplines. For example, the number of Hours Watched of unofficial match broadcasts of the most popular VCT series regions were 44% of the total. And the identical figure for PUBG Mobile matches was 9.6 million Hours Watched, i.e. 43% of the total. More traditional disciplines such as League of Legends are less reliant on community commentators, but some leagues still receive a significant increase in number of Viewers thanks to individual streamers. So the overall contribution of community broadcasting into tournament audiences is very tangible. The community cast undoubtedly helps new disciplines to attract new audience.