World Series of Warzone grows over 100% in watch time thanks to new format

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The World Series of Warzone 2023 Global Finals has become the most popular esports tournament in terms of Peak Viewers in the history of the discipline. Thanks to it, the entire WSOW 2023 season has shown significant growth in key metrics compared to the previous year, and now this battle royale mod can compete with Call of Duty Majors events in terms of audience reach.

Originally, the World Series of Warzone was launched by Activision together with BoomTV, a company specializing in show matches featuring top content creators in the battle royale genre. In 2021, in partnership with Twitch, a series of four Twitch Rivals tournaments with star players and streamers from the United States and Europe were hosted. These events collectively garnered over 5.43 million Hours Watched and attracted 441K Peak Viewers. It was an outstanding result for a new series, which is why Activision itself took charge of developing WSOW in 2022 with more focus on esports.

The new organizers applied a more traditional esports approach to WSOW. For example, they introduced a more complex format and started conducting regional qualifications rather than simply inviting influencers to participate. In the short term, this led to a decline in audience reach, but the recently concluded World Series of Warzone 2023 Global Finals gathered a fairly large number of viewers at its peak, comparable to the numbers seen during the first Twitch Rivals tournaments in 2021.

Comparison Of The World Series of Warzone 2023 With The Previous Season 

If we look at the overall statistics of the World Series of Warzone in 2023, we can note the following results. In the current season, administrators have increased the number of qualifying tournaments, implementing a multi-stage qualification process for teams from North America and Europe. In total, 11 tournaments were broadcast, compared to just 4 in 2022.

Warzone 2023 season Viewership Statistics

All the World Series of Warzone 2023 tournaments, including qualifiers and the Grand Final, amassed over 5.7 million HW. The total broadcast time was almost 57 hours, and the total prize pool was $1.25 million. The AV number during the streams was approximately 100.8K, with the PV number of 382.4K.

The most popular languages for the World Series of Warzone 2023 season broadcasts were English and French. Together, they accounted for 73% of the total Hours Watched. As for popular channels, the official Call of Duty channel on Twitch emerged as the leader by watch time. Second place went to popular streamer chowh1.

The statistics take into account only those tournaments that had official broadcasts

Compared to the 2022 season, the Airtime has increased by 147%, and the total watch time has almost doubled. Meanwhile, the Peak Viewers number has grown by 30%, but the Average Viewers number has decreased by 14%. This is because the 2022 season was more compact and had fewer tournaments.

The current World Series of Warzone season has shown that the Warzone competitive scene can not only develop separately from Call of Duty but also surpass the team-based tactical shooter in terms of audience reach. The recent World Series of Warzone 2023 Global Finals attracted more Peak Viewers than any CoD tournament in the past three years. The World Series of Warzone continues to expand geographically, attracting new countries and regions: this will surely have a positive impact on tournament viewership statistics in the future.