Esports Insider collaborates with esports analytical firm Esports Charts to take a look at event viewership on a month-by-month basis.
There isn’t a standard viewership metric that’s utilised and agreed upon by all parties in the industry at this point in time so it’s not always possible to compare events with a fair approach. Peak viewership isn’t the best way to see just how many people watched throughout an event, but comparing average audience numbers also has its problems considering some events can last a day and others a month.
With that in mind, we’ll be utilising peak viewership to observe the maximum audience that esports events are attracting. Here are the results for esports events in May 2020!
Most popular tournaments of May 2020
In terms of peak viewership, the Mid-Season Cup from Riot Games’ ever-popular title League of Legends takes the top spot. Pitting the top four teams from both China and Korea against each other, the event reached almost 600,000 concurrent viewers at one point. It was the match-up between T1 and Top Esports that was the biggest draw for the online event.
Arena of Glory Spring, a tournament for Tencent-published MOBA Arena of Valor, came in at second place with 468,267 peak viewership – a sizeable drop-off from the aforementioned Mid-Season Cup. From there, the events that round out the top five most popular tournaments all sit above 300,000 peak viewers.
The Southeast Asian PUBG Mobile Pro League placed third with 371,470 peak viewers, Chinese League of Legends makes another appearance with LPL Spring maxing out at 331,166 peak viewers, and the North American division of ESL One: Road to Rio placed fifth with the Brazilian brawl of MIBR versus FURIA bringing in 315,567 viewers.
Most popular English-speaking tournaments of May 2020
When taking into account English viewers in a vacuum, the results vary massively. Warzone, the Battle Royale spinoff from Call of Duty, proved to be the most popular title among English viewers by occupying the top three spots.
Outside of Warzone, LPL Spring proved to be a popular event outside of China with 227,026 peak viewers. With the absence of motorsports, the Spanish Grand Prix in the F1 Esports circuit placed fifth by achieving a peak viewership of 218,124.
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