March in Esports – viewers in numbers

It’s undeniable that esports are popular, and that they are becoming more and more popular seemingly every day. With events, championships and more starting and running all the time, this year’s esports season is already in full swing… and the viewer numbers on Youtube and Twitch reflect that too.

We had a look at the statistics on Newzoo to find out just how much time esports fans spend engaging in their favourite hobby! Looking at Youtube in particular, the most popular and most watched esports of March were League of Legends – hands down the most popular esport in the world – in March alone, people worldwide watched 13.7 million hours of content on Youtube.

In second place is a mobile esport that’s a little less popular in Europe – Arena of Valor is mostly played across Asia, though it is spreading. 3.4 million hours of content were watched on Youtube in March.

CS:GO takes bronze here, with roughly 1.4 million hours watched, it is still one of the top esports in the world, and not-so-narrowly beats both Dota 2 and Rainbow Six Siege who amassed 0.7 and 0.6 million hours respectively on Youtube – those are some impressive stats.

As for Twitch, here too the most watched esport is League of Legends, but with even more ridiculous viewer stats – 24.1 million hours of esports content was watched in March alone. The runner-up here is Dota 2 with a ‘mere’ 18 million hours watched, followed by CS:GO with its 15.1 million hours.

Though there is obviously a marked difference between the popular titles and the amount of hours watched, both streaming platforms have significant numbers of viewers and hours – if you kept track, the top 3 of both platforms add up to 75 million hours – that’s over eight and a half THOUSAND years, if counted consecutively rather than concurrently – if that’s not proof that esports are a serious pastime for a significant amount of people, nothing is.

As for other popular games, on Youtube games like Fortnite, Warface, PUBG, Street Fighter V and Mobile Legends: Bang bang round out the top ten of the most watched esports in the world in March… and even the ‘least’ popular one (Mobile Legends: Bang bang) still achieved a staggering 0.2 million hours of content watched.

On Twitch, Overwatch, StarCraft 2, Hearthstone, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Magic: The Gathering, World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 make up the most popular esports out there, painting a completely different picture than the Youtube numbers do.

Here, the least-popular esport (COD:BO4) still had over 1.4 million hours watched. It’s quite obvious from this that Twitch is the more popular platform to view (non-mobile) esports on, but still, the more important takeaway is the sheer amount of time people spent watching this content.

A single million hours is over 114 years – keep that in mind when you next open Twitch or Youtube in order to watch your favourite esport!