First Overwatch Champions Series Major peaks 40K viewers higher than last year's OWL Midseason Madness

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The Overwatch Champions Series 2024 Major marked the midpoint of the new esports schedule for Overwatch. The first international LAN of the year replaces the previous Mid-Season Madness event from last year, and the first opportunity for the esport to test the power of its global audience. So far in 2024, viewership has looked promising through the major regions, and the OCS 2024 Major continues this trend of improvement. 

Overwatch has replaced its failed franchised system with one that resembles traditional esports more. Teams must qualify for regional events, before competing for a chance to compete at international Major events during these regional tournaments. The recent Major is the first international LAN of the year, which will be capped off by a “Finals” event this November.

Viewership for Overwatch has seemed promising through the first half of 2024. Regional events showed strong viewership, especially in Asia, and the OWCS 2024 Major was the first chance for Overwatch to combine this regional viewership. The recent Major reached 125.1K Peak Viewers, a stark increase compared to last year’s midseason tournament. 

The event invited 8 teams from around the globe to a double-elimination bracket. The event format ensured high viewership for the tournament from the get-go; the lack of a group phase meant teams could be eliminated from the event in only two matches. Fans tuned into the event from the get-go, and the tournament maintained 97.4K Average Viewers throughout.

The most popular match of the event was Toronto Defiant’s match against Crazy Raccoon, a Japanese esports organization fielding a team of Korean players. However, North American teams at the event struggled and were eliminated early, leading to a drop in English-language viewership for the final day of the tournament. Toronto Defiant ultimately lost the upper bracket semi final against CR and were promptly eliminated by ENCE in the lower bracket. The North American team only competed in 3 games at the event, with compatriots M80 also playing 3 matches, and NRG Shock were eliminated after only two. 

The event garnered 2.66M Hours Watched in total, but Japanese and North American audiences were not particularly interested in the event, despite the fact that Crazy Raccoon were the champions of the Major. While the Japanese audience is one of Overwatch’s biggest demographics, Japanese fans are more interested in cheering for Japanese players, rather than just supporting a Japanese organization. No Japanese players were in attendance at the Major.

The official ow_esports Twitch channel was the most popular broadcaster of the event, receiving 48.4K Peak Viewers at peak. Legdaygaming and ta1yo_tv received their peak viewership thanks to a combination of raids and Twitch Drops. Both streamers had Twitch Drops enabled while covering the event, but legdaygaming reached his peak viewership thanks to a Twitch Raid from the official ow_esports channel. Ta1yo_tv received his peak thanks to a swell in viewership from Japanese fans looking for Twitch Drops, with his viewership rising and falling as fans collected their Drops from his channel.

Twitch was the most popular broadcasting option for the event by far. The purple platform hosted the vast majority of the tournament’s viewership, although YouTube Live did host some successful streams and Korean viewership came in from AfreecaTV and CHZZK, with the former receiving more watch time than the new entry to the industry.

Compared to last year’s Overwatch League 2023 Midseason Madness, the new OWCS’ mid-year tournament received significantly more viewership across the board. The OWCS has received more watch time, higher peak viewership, and generally more viewers throughout the tournament as a whole.

Last year’s Midseason Madness was watched by more Korean fans than usual thanks to it being hosted in Seoul, and it did record an increase in viewership compared to the previous year: this means the OWCS 2024 Major has continued this trend of increasing viewership for Overwatch esports.

Japanese viewership has also grown for Overwatch esports in recent years. The audience has quickly slotted in behind English as the second most popular language for the discipline, and other audiences are growing too. Arabic has become one of the largest minor languages for Overwatch esports viewership, thanks to the success of the Saudi Arabian esports organization Team Falcons. 

The first of the year OWCS is showing a positive trend forward for Overwatch. With the first year of any new event series, hype is a considerable factor in regards to viewership, it will have to be seen if the OWCS can continue this healthy viewership trend throughout the upcoming years. The upcoming Finals event this November will also be compared to the OWL Playoffs as the season-ending tournament which usually becomes one of the year’s top tournaments.