Exclusive: The Truth Behind E League’s Viewership

Story of the Week: We’ve now completed Week 2 in Turner’s grand experiment into eSports. Immediately after launch there were the standard, un-investigated headlines like “E League Debut Should Have Other Professional Sports Concerned”. As expected the headlines don’t come close to telling the full story. If that works for you, stop now. If you don’t mind numbers and want a peek behind the curtain, keep reading.

I believe that there are 3 questions that E League is hoping to answer:

Can a large media company unexperienced in eSports put on authentic programming?

Can eSports transition and compete on TV?

Can bringing traditional sports production to eSports increase viewership?

3 qualifying points to keep in mind as they’re critical:

This is very, very, very early; only taking into account the first two weeks of hopefully years to come

E League is scheduled on Friday Nights at 10PM or the “Death Slot” for TV programming

Today, eSports TV/Digital Revenue = Advertisers = Viewership

Let’s start with a quick overview of the TV ratings and the Week 1 metrics released by Turner PR highlighted by importance.

Great to see a 51% increase between Week 1 and Week 2. It’s myopic to draw trends from 2 data points but Ill make a slight attempt.

Week 2 should have been higher than Week 1 based on the Memorial Day Holiday. But Week 1’s Finals had a North American team whereas Week 2 were EU teams and therefore you’d expect Week 1 to be higher. Ill leave the Counter-Strike analysis to the E League experts but in Week 3 if a NA team makes it to the Finals, it will be interesting to see the ratings impact.

[Going forward, there will be a Weekly update on E League Ratings in eSports Weekly]

I’m not going to comment again on the minimal value of “Impressions/Viewers” when there’s no context. The biggest metrics to focus on: TV Viewers, Digital Avg. Concurrents and Total Minutes Engaged. Trust me, no $2M ad deals were done based on delivering Social Media Impressions. While the engagement numbers are solid, I’m going to focus on TV and Digital Viewership.

#1 AUTHENTIC PROGRAMMING

Every step of the way, Turner has been touting their priority to create the most authentic eSports experience and to learn from the community. I’ve seen a lot of eSports events and production and this was one of the best I’ve ever seen.

The vast Sports experience and millions that Turner invested clearly shows in both the Digital and TV broadcasts. The slick production value was expected. The biggest challenge is opening up eSports to a new audience and I believe Turner handled that very well. The Counter-Strike 101’s and analyst commentary demonstrated educating an audience which is clearly lacking in more traditional eSports streams. Huge props to Arby’s as well for creating a custom TV spot for E League. Don’t understand it? Good. That means you’re not a fan yet of Counter-Strike.

Can a large media company unexperienced in eSports put on authentic programming? Absolutely.

# 2 ESPORTS ON TV

While some may have thought Turner would be heavy handed with the production, I didn’t think this would be the biggest obstacle. I’ve said before that “eSports doesn’t need TV, TV needs eSports”. This is a more difficult challenge than authenticity. Let’s start by comparing E League to other eSports on TV in 2016:

[Nielsen Data from SportsTVRatings.com]

Not too bad considering Chasing The Cup aired on a Monday at 8pm. Very little comparison however.

E LEAGUE VS MLS and NHL

Now we’re getting somewhere. This is astonishing to me for this reason alone:

2011: NBC paid $2B or $200M/Year for NHL broadcast rights.

2015: ESPN/Fox/Univision paid $720M or $75M/Year for MLS broadcast rights



In the era of declining TV viewership and plummeting cable subscriptions, these large contracts are a huge weight on media companies. If Turner can continue to drive eSports ratings that outperform MLS on ESPN2 and the NHL, that’s an astonishing feat. We’re also not close to seeing eSports broadcast fees in those ranges but E League has done deals with Turner family property Esporte Interativo in Brazil and MCS Extreme bought the French rights. Turner initially said E League would distributed in 80 countries.

E LEAGUE VS THE BIG BANG THEORY

As we expand the comparison further, another story emerges. If Turner wasn’t programming E League, what would be playing instead? The Big Bang Theory clearly draws a lot more viewers than E League ~5X higher. But TBBT cost Turner the highest ever payment for a syndicated show at $1.5M+ per episode, more than the $1M per episode they paid for Seinfeld. Now look at this from a TV Executive perspective: If E League costs less per viewer than TBBT, that’s a good ROI. However, I’m not going to play TV Executive and guess E League total costs which would have provided a good baseline.

E LEAGUE VS CABLE

Expanding even further out, when compared against general Cable Entertainment, E League’s first 2 Weeks would not even be in the Top 100. Provides perspective on the overall scale of TV.

E LEAGUE VS SPORTS

Now this is the Billion Dollar bet. These are the top Sports ratings by Category over the 2 weeks that E League has run. Remember the statements about eSports being bigger than the NBA in viewership? Nope. In fact, NBA ratings this year set records for both TNT (coincidentally another Turner company) and ABC. However focus on these points:

PGA : Solidly beating the Sunday Final Round of the Dean & Deluca Invitational. This isn’t a tiny event — the total purse was almost $7M.

Solidly beating the Sunday Final Round of the Dean & Deluca Invitational. This isn’t a tiny event — the total purse was almost $7M. NASCAR/UFC: Both NASCAR and UFC have been hailed as the sport of the future and targeted to a younger audience. eSports is within relative striking distance. Ill go out on a limb here: In 2 years eSports can eclipse UFC, NASCAR on Cable and get close to MLB.

Just for fun here’s 2 more comparisons.

I’d love to know what it costs to put on “First Take” but Stephen A Smith’s salary alone is $3M+/Year. Former “First Take” host Skip Bayless is getting $26M/4 Years at FS1. That’s a lot of money for not a lot of viewers.

I couldn’t resist this one — how did E League do against eSports ranter Colin Cowherd?

Maybe Colin should start playing games. Sure that doesn’t count his audio listeners but E League numbers don’t include the digital viewership as well.

Can eSports transition and compete on TV? Yes but a long way to go.

E LEAGUE VS DIGITAL OR THE POWER OF TWITCH

After analyzing the Twitch data, these results were probably more surprising than the TV ratings. While TV is definitely needed to close the large ad deals, Twitch makes up 80%+ of the total content. Here are the top Twitch Channels during E League’s Week 1:

[This data is directly from Twitch’s API published by Gamoloco, a French eSports analytics company.]

Who’s that at #1 you ask? Meet Lirik, one of the most popular streamers on Twitch with 1.4M followers and another 300K on Twitter who started in 2011. As I referenced the high costs of Sports TV rights vs. current viewership, something similar is at work here. Take a look at what it looked like watching Lirik stream during the week vs. E League:

Most Twitch streamers use Face Cams, Green Screens, Overlay Graphics or a combination of all 3 — Lirik is audio only. Now compare that to the massive production cost required to put on E League.

You can argue that streamers are on longer causing more hours watched, they play popular games, that Overwatch just came out, etc. etc., etc. But if a streamer can draw half the Average audience for the cost of probably dinner delivery — that ROI comparison is not even close.

The additional question becomes what is the overall baseline value of Twitch and it’s community when introducing any eSport onto it’s platform. With Facebook jumping in the eSports Live Streaming pool, times ahead will be interesting.

Can bringing traditional sports production to eSports increase viewership? Yes but at much higher production costs.

E LEAGUE SEASON 2

This is a solid first attempt by Turner. There are few areas that I would recommend and hope for Season 2 to grow viewership:

Pre-Launch Content: Turner created a ton of player, team, and fun video content during the Week 1 launch. Twitter and Periscope were used for Behind the Scenes. But why release it so late? Start seeding this much earlier.

Turner created a ton of player, team, and fun video content during the Week 1 launch. Twitter and Periscope were used for Behind the Scenes. But why release it so late? Start seeding this much earlier. Marketing: I live in NYC and have been actively looking for E League ads. I have seen a grand total of 1 — and that happened just this week. I’ve seen promo’s on Twitch and Reddit — but Turner already has that audience. Just using the NCAA Tournament and NBA Playoffs would have been a prime opportunity to pump the messaging. Hope to see more branding and cross-promotion across Turner’s brands. Here’s a Free one E League Marketing Team: Use Adult Swim-type promo’s. It’s perfect for this audience.

I live in NYC and have been actively looking for E League ads. I have seen a grand total of 1 — and that happened just this week. I’ve seen promo’s on Twitch and Reddit — but Turner already has that audience. Just using the NCAA Tournament and NBA Playoffs would have been a prime opportunity to pump the messaging. Hope to see more branding and cross-promotion across Turner’s brands. Here’s a Free one E League Marketing Team: Use Adult Swim-type promo’s. It’s perfect for this audience. New Game: I believe Season 2 will showcase another title and I’m hoping its not a Shooter. Outside of the violent issues with brand partnerships, other genres may perform better. I love fighters like Street Fighter V but it doesn’t draw huge numbers. The sleeper hit and the closest to Poker? Hearthstone. While the learning curve is much greater than Counter-Strike and not nearly as visceral, it’s highly popular and draws digital viewers. If anyone can make it exciting, it can be Turner.

I believe Season 2 will showcase another title and I’m hoping its not a Shooter. Outside of the violent issues with brand partnerships, other genres may perform better. I love fighters like Street Fighter V but it doesn’t draw huge numbers. The sleeper hit and the closest to Poker? Hearthstone. While the learning curve is much greater than Counter-Strike and not nearly as visceral, it’s highly popular and draws digital viewers. If anyone can make it exciting, it can be Turner. Time Slot: We’ve seen how eSports performs on the worst day and worst time of the week. Give it a shot at a better time. How about Sunday afternoons? This audience wasn’t even born when Back to the Future Part 3 was released. Just try it.

That may have been a lot to digest but here’s your TL/DR: