January
The top 10 esports organizations in live streaming leaderboard saw some big changes in January 2023. This month saw a significant increase in representation for mobile esports orgs total watchtime. Of the top 10 esports orgs, 4 of the 10 had little to no hours watched generated by content creators. On the other hand, the other 6 organizations saw the majority of their live streaming viewership coming from content creators (70-100%).
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Boosts Esports Viewership
The Mobile Legend: Band Band’s M4 World Championship generated 54.8M hours watched from January 1st-15th. The 4 most-watched teams from the M4 Championships were propelled into this month’s top 10 esports orgs rankings, with RRQ Hoshi taking the crown for most watched esports org of January 2023 with almost 19M hours watched.
Blacklist International generated the second most hours watched during the M4 World Championship with 13.4M. Followed by ECHO who generated 13.1M hours watched and Onic Esports generated 10.3M.
While mobile esports might not be as popular in the west, many eastern countries continue to support the mobile gaming esports scene on platforms like YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming.
xQc departs from Luminosity Gaming
The biggest changeup in this month’s leaderboard is the drop of Luminosity from the top spot to the 9th most-watched esports organization. The major contributor to this decline in viewership was the departure of top live streaming creator xQc from the organization on January 13th.
In those first two weeks of the month, xQc generated 6.1M hours watched, just under half of his total 13M hours watched for January. His viewership contributed to two-thirds of the entire organization’s hours watched for the month, and the org as a whole saw 99% of their viewership come from content creators alone.
Luminosity was the most watched esports org in live streaming for 2022 with 279M hours watched. However, a majority of these hours were attributed to xQc, who made up 83% of Luminosity Gaming’s total watch time. The loss of the top Twitch streamer could cost Luminosity significant market share against other esports orgs for 2023.
While creators remain one of the primary ways to increase an organization’s total watchtime, the diversification of a team’s creator portfolio is just as important. While having one of the top streamers on the roster might be a huge benefit, if said streamer has their livestreaming numbers impacted, it also takes a large toll on the organization as a whole. Having a well-balanced group of creators who can mitigate some of that volatility is a key part of maintaining consistent viewership throughout the year.
