Recently Twitch and Overwatch League, Blizzard signed a deal worth around $90 million for two years exclusive footage apart from Blizzard owned MLG.tv for the Overwatch league. This deal, while definitely one of the biggest in esports also hinged on the fact that OWL needed at least 80k-90k viewers on a regular basis in order to make it worthwhile for Twitch. Of course Day 1 of the Overwatch League saw viewership numbers rise to around 400,000; a number which far surpassed expectations for many in the industry.
The Overwatch League is the first of its kind league in esports. With a lot of investment and industry being involved in ensuring its success, it was imperative that the viewership numbers for the league stay high.
Soo……
One of my roles at Twitch is to predict viewership for tentpole events.
I'm actually really good at this part of my job. Historically, my peak CCU range estimates are correct 90% of the time.
I WAS SO COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY WRONG ABOUT #OWL2018
— Ben Goldhaber (@FishStix) January 11, 2018