The Minecraft Championship Tournament Series state and dynamics of the game on Twitch
Minecraft retained its title as one of the most popular Twitch and YouTube games in 2022. On the other hand, the number of viewers at the Minecraft Championship tournament series has been decreasing with each new event and the concurrent viewership decreased 6.5 times over the last year. Esports Charts has analyzed the situation and shares some findings with our readers.
What is Minecraft Championship?
Minecraft Championship (MCC) is a series of regular entertainment tournaments hosted by the Minecraft community and featuring popular streamers and bloggers. Each MCC tournament usually features ten teams of four players each. They compete against each other in "basic Minecraft skills": speed building, resource management, parkour, passing obstacle courses, PvP, etc. Each event includes new mini-games and competition modes, but MCC doesn't have any prize pool. According to the organizers, teams participate in the events to have fun, as well as to pay tribute to their favorite game and community.
Minecraft Championship participants include many content creators who usually broadcast the competition on their personal Twitch, YouTube and other platforms' channels. Among them are Dream, Quackity, Nihachu, CaptainPuffy, Ludwig, Pokimane, Sapnap, TommyInnit, GeorgeNotFound, Technoblade (died in 2022) and others. Most of them have hundreds of thousands, even millions, of subscribers on social media and streaming platforms. Of course, the top content creators don't play every MCC tournament, so the lineup changes regularly.
Minecraft Championship Statistics in 2022
The peak of Minecraft Championship popularity was in the middle of 2021 — it was the period when the events attracted the most viewers. MC Championship #15, held in July, is the leader by Peak Viewers. The tournament had 913PV, with 776K Average Viewers.
Most popular Minecraft Championship tournaments
The popularity of Minecraft Championship began to decline in 2022. It didn't happen overnight, but gradually, from tournament to tournament. MC Championship #28, held in December, has become the event with the most modest audience reach in the series. Its AV number was only 116K viewers, and its PV number barely passed the 137.7K mark. 
There are several reasons for this decline. First, top content creators have begun to pay less and less attention to the series. For example, Dream, who is considered the most popular Minecraft blogger and streamer, as well as the record holder in the number of Minecraft Championship wins, didn't stream the latest tournaments in the series at all. On the other hand, the decline of metrics began even earlier and may be due to the trivial drop in interest in the format itself. It should be noted that there were many other Minecraft tournaments in 2022 that had a much larger audience.
Other Popular Minecraft Events
Most popular Minecraft events in 2022
Twitch Rivals Squidcraft Games ft. Komanche, which has become the most popular Minecraft event in history, took place in January 2022. It lasted for over 17 hours and racked up 17.5 million Hours Watched in that time. The broadcast had over a million Average Viewers, and the Peak Viewers number reached the 2.2 million mark. Squidcraft Games ft. Komanche featured top Spanish streamers who covered the tournament on their channels. Among them were elxokas, Auronplay, ElSpreen, JuansGuarnizo, Rubius, ibai, TheGrefg and other creators. The Twitch Rivals Squidcraft Games format was inspired by the Netflix series of the same name, with 150 of Twitch's most famous Spanish-language streamers competing in various Minecraft mini-games over several days until one winner remained. The winner was awarded $100K, read more about it here.
The RP server made Minecraft one of the most popular categories on Spanish-language Twitch
Twitch Rivals RingCraft ft. TheGrefG, a similar format event that featured top Spanish-language streamers, was held in September 2022. This time the participants competed in mini-games based on the "Lord of the Rings'' setting. Among other similar events were Saw Minecraft Games 2022 in the horror style, as well as the roleplay server Tortilla Land, created by streamers Auronplay and Perxitaa. The latter gained enormous popularity in 2022, especially in the Spanish community.
In October, more than a million Peak Viewers watched Minecraft Live 2022 — the annual broadcast presentation hosted by the developers, which covered future updates to Minecraft, new mods, the Dungeons and Legends expansions, and more. Minecraft Live 2022 lasted for just over two hours. The broadcasts saw 779K AV, with over 1.1 million PV.
Minecraft Statistics on Twitch
Minecraft remains one of the most popular titles for entertainment events, mostly because of its flexible customization and the ability to adapt the game to any theme or newsbreak.
Most watched games on Twitch in 2022
When it comes to Minecraft's popularity on Twitch, there has been a slight decline in the audience over the past year. In 2021, Minecraft ranked sixth among the most popular categories on Twitch, accumulating more than 852 million HW. At that time, the category had 98.4K AV, while the PV number reached the 973K mark. The number of Average Channels was 3.7K, and their Peak number reached 9.9K.
The situation has changed in 2022. The Minecraft category dropped to eighth place in the Twitch ranking with slightly more than 540 million HW (-36%). The category's AV number also dropped to 63.1K (-36%). The situation is similar with the Average (2.3K, -37%) and Peak (5.8K, -41%) Channels. The only metric that increased was the Peak Viewers. Thanks to the participation of top streamers at entertainment events, the category reached 1.92 million PV. This is the fourth highest total among all categories on the platform in 2022. As you can see, Minecraft has both positive and negative features at the end of the year. It is interesting to see how the game will show itself in 2023.
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