This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.
The Intel Extreme Masters Season 8 event in Cologne marked the first international League of Legends competition since the end of the Season 3 World Championships. 2,122,820 viewers tuned in to watch American teams Cloud 9 and Counter Logic Gaming square off against European powerhouses Fnatic and Gambit Gaming in highly anticipated cross-Atlantic games. The official Twitch English stream hit a peak of just under 300,000 viewers on finals day, with the United States, Germany, Poland, France, and Sweden as the five countries who tuned in the most.
The Electronic Sports League has provided onGamers a breakdown of the source of viewership for IEM Cologne including Twitch and Asian steams, total unique viewers, total views/sessions, and peak concurrent viewers. ESL aims to bring transparency to live streaming statistics that are released by leagues and developers after large scale events.
"Openness and transparency are a key on the road of broad acceptance of eSport," ESL CEO and Founder Ralf Reichert told onGamers. "The community, press, sponsors, publishers and public deserve to know what's going on. Based on that we heavily support onGamers approach to bring light into a complicated dark jungle."
"I honestly can't judge what other people do but right now I think most release true data. With esport gaining importance the tendency and risk to fix stats gets higher. I don't see compelling reasons why not every other league would follow suit."
Reichert's statements and ESL's release of the information comes after Reichert and DreamHack CEO Robert Ohlén each tweeted that they would provide a breakdown of live streaming event statistics if asked.
In an interview at DreamHack Winter, Ohlén told onGamers what's important for them.
"When we present our numbers, it's unique's, the amount of hours viewed, that's the important stuff. It's not important for how many people push F5 on their computer."
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Dreamhack boss Robert Ohlen discusses Dreamhack numbers, industry standards, and Winter 2013
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When asked if DreamHack will present source numbers for their events, Ohlén stated that they will, under certain circumstances.
"We're not going to take a screenshot of an XL sheet. We'll make a deck. We are allowed to do whatever we want to [with our numbers], if we're allowed to by our NDA's and agreements. Yes we will present all the metrics as far as we know them...Trust us, we're Swedish."
Twitch Streams | |||
---|---|---|---|
Total | Total Views/Sessions | Unique Viewers | Peak Concurrent Viewers |
November 23, 2013 | 2,776,060 | 1,208,260 | 194,212 |
November 24, 2013 | 3,904,600 | 1,462,580 | 302,851 |
Total | 6,680,660 | 302,851 | |
Total English Stream | 6,274,700 | 2,122,820 | 285,246 |
Total Streams | |||
Total Views/Sessions | Unique Viewers | Peak Concurrent Viewers | |
November 23, 2013 | 2,776,060 | 1,208,260 | 217,671 |
November 24, 2013 | 3,904,600 | 1,462,580 | 338,625 |
Total | 6,680,660 | 338,625 |
Numbers for the Asian streams were not available at this time. ESL says that although the event was held in Cologne, Germany, seeing the United States as the country who tuned in the most should be expected.
"If you compare the populations of countries it's not that surprising", says ESL's James Lampkin. "The US is about 315 million people - Germany is about 80. The broadcast was fairly friendly to US timezones so its not that surprising. People regularly compare all of Europe (50 countries) to NA (3 countries) which is a bit of a mistake. We don't focus too heavily on which county ranks #1 as the top 5-10 viewership countries tend to stay the same."
Country | Total Views/Sessions | % of Views are Unique Viewers |
United States | 1,084,260 | 17.28 |
Germany | 868,680 | 13.84 |
Poland | 375,840 | 5.99 |
France | 367,760 | 5.86 |
Sweden | 332,000 | 5.29 |
United Kingdom | 314,820 | 5.02 |
Canada | 278,160 | 4.43 |
Brazil | 249,200 | 3.97 |
Spain | 231,300 | 3.69 |
Netherlands | 203,940 | 3.25 |
Russian Federation | 191,700 | 3.06 |
Turkey | 179,940 | 2.87 |
Denmark | 179,060 | 2.85 |
Portugal | 154,640 | 2.46 |
Greece | 128,860 | 2.05 |
Czech Republic | 128,740 | 2.05 |
Norway | 127,740 | 2.04 |
Taiwan, Province of China | 116,960 | 1.86 |
Belgium | 113,180 | 1.80 |
Australia | 112,160 | 1.79 |
Finland | 106,880 | 1.70 |
Austria | 79,340 | 1.26 |
Italy | 76,240 | 1.22 |
Hong Kong | 71,300 | 1.14 |
Hungary | 70,480 | 1.12 |
Riot Games declined at this time to provide a breakdown for their record-breaking 32 million viewed Season 3 World Championships. DreamHack says that they will be released, but that they need time to gather the data. Red Bull Esports and Blizzard were not available for comment at the time of this posting.
Image Credit: ESL