In the new competitive season, Blizzard decided to change the approach applied to the ranking system and selections for the year's main tournament. Instead of the many instances of participation in various tournaments, the players are now facing one big league that incorporates the best of the best.

The first season of this league has come to an end. In total, there are three GrandMasters regions: Asia, Europe and Americas. The winner of each championship receives not only a portion of the prize pool, but also an invitation to GrandMasters 2019 - Global Finals.

The overall trend shown was more or less positive. Every week, the viewers received a decent number of interesting matches, each of which had a real influence on the final situation around the league and its participants.

It is worth separately mentioning that the participants of this event could not engage in personal streaming during its matches. This rule has influenced the game category on Twitch in a quite interesting fashion. You can find out more about this in our monthly reports on the platform.

The Europe became the most popular region – based on the comparison by both the average and peak viewers of the championship. However, the gap from its counterpart is not that huge, being equal to a couple thousand viewers.

As an example, the European matches were watched by an average of 27 thousand viewers. At the same time on a broadcast of North American competition, a similar figure stopped at the mark of 21 thousand viewers. For Asia, it became even lower – 17 thousand viewers. In percentage terms, this means that America gathered 19% less compared to the European result – whereas the Asian League gathered 34% less.

The difference between the regions can be seen better when comparing the hours watched. But in this case it is worth noting that the broadcast of the North American tournament lasted 9 hours longer than the other two events. However, it did not affect the final state of affairs that much.

The European Championship shows the biggest result – 3 million 428 thousand hours. At the same time, the second spot in the list goes to North America and its 2 million 942 thousand hours. The third and last spot is held by Asia. The result of this region is 2 million 232 thousand hours.

All in all, everything says that this is a new beginning for Blizzard. Such results precisely show that Hearthstone fans are ready to spend their time watching the drawn-out leagues. The second season awaits ahead, and next is the end-year tournament. We are waiting for it in order to compare the instances of this competition and gain at least a little understanding of its long-term perspectives.