2017 ESPORTS TV RATINGS: NINTENDO WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, THE CW, ELEAGUE
TNL Take: This week continues the eSports on TV trend with several key stats:
- DisneyXD broadcast the 2017 Nintendo World Championship for the first time and shows Nintendo's dedicated push into eSports in 2017 in addition to a great Sunday time slot of 5PM
- Not including DisneyXD's 60+ eSports programs to date, the total on all other channels including ESPN, TBS and the NFL Network has now hit 50 - more than double that of 2016
- The CW again benefitted by showcasing eSports during a key time slot - Tuesday Prime Time
[Due to the massive amount of programming, The Next Level will showcase the Top 25 in the weekly reports for easier viewing]
THE CW
Out of all the eSports programming over the past year, The CW has continually given the best programming time slots: Weekday Prime Time. Not including Candy Crush - please don't @ me - The CW again takes the #1 slot with their Chasing the Cup series, this time featuring Injustice 2.
Does this showcase the popularity of Injustice 2 and the Fighting genre for this audience? Not necessarily as ESPNU showed the same game on a Wed at 1AM and drew the lowest audience of any eSports program with 11,000 viewers.
More than likely the high viewership is The CW's reach, coupled with a great time slot; vs. the actual title as evidenced by the #2 program around another new game H1Z1.
DISNEYXD
We've already covered DisneyXD's massive eSports programming but this past week was a special one: the 2017 Nintendo World Championship were broadcast for the first time on the channel.
And it delivered.
Nintendo's family friendly games fits perfectly with DisneyXD's audience and it's not surprising that the 2017 World Championship would rank as #1 - what is surprising is that it drew 30%+ more viewership than the 2017 EVO Super Smash Bros. Finals which is the second ranked program.
Nintendo based games/events currently make up 6 of the top 7 ranked eSports programs on DisneyXD.
TBS
This week ELEAGUE had their Counter-Strike preview show before the start of the playoffs, which always perform well as it's just 1 hour vs. 3 hours.
The very interesting part is that this week, the Preview show was shown at 3AM and still garnered 300,000+ viewers.
Pretty amazing considering the time slot and more data showing the audience appetite for eSports shoulder content.