The Overwatch League concluded its 2022 run this month and garnered 12.5 million hours watched across live streaming platforms.
The playoffs for OWL ran from October 12th through November 4th, concluding with the Grand Final match between the San Francisco Shock and Dallas Fuel. The Grand Final match was the most watched match of the entire season, garnering 1.5 million hours watched with an average minute audience of 521K viewers (including rebroadcast statistics).
When looking at the OWL playoffs, it’s interesting to note that about a quarter of all playoffs and Grand Finals viewership was from rebroadcast live streams. 400K hours watched of the Grand Finals and 2.3M hours watched of the entire playoffs viewership came from rebroadcasts.
This data shows that while live streaming is incredibly important for esports tournament viewership, fans also desire the ability to watch esports on other schedules. Whether the tournament clashed with existing plans, or they just wanted to relive the hype, Overwatch fans loved the rebroadcast content.
In addition to VODs and social media, rebroadcasting esports tournaments can help increase viewership of the event and keep fans entertained and engaged in the league.
