DreamLeague Dota 2 Major Pushes Over 10M Hours Watched on Twitch

DreamHack’s  DreamLeague Season 11 Dota 2  Major Finished with over 10M hours watched on Twitch for 11 days of action across the organizers two English and Russian-language channels.

Over the time period, DreamHack channels accounted for the top two most-watched channels on Twitch, and overall coverage boosted Dota 2 viewership on Twitch to 20.6M hours watched from March 14-24 making it the fourth most-watched game on Twitch.

While the English-language channel for the DreamLeague garnered more total hours watched over the course of the event (5.8M), the Russian-language broadcast (5.6M hours watched) actually boasted stronger average viewership.

The official DreamLeague channel’s 29K concurrent viewers came over the course of 246 hours of airtime that included peripheral content that recorded lower viewership than live matches. The Russian-language channel for DreamHack posted an average of 61K CCV with just 85.9 hours of airtime. Outside of that discrepancy there was also a higher peak viewership total on the Russian-language channel of 203K CCV. The English channel posted a max CCV of 124K.

As one would likely predict the most-watched sessions of the event were surrounding the final two days of the tournament. During 10 hours of airtime for the grand finale, the Russian-language channel averaged 140K CCV. The English-language channel posted an average of 86K CCV over 11 hours of airtime.

The last time DreamLeague served as a Dota 2 Major was at the beginning of the 2017-2018 season, but the structure of that tournament differed largely from this one. With only three days of matches between Dec. 1-3, DreamHack’s top two channels pulled 2.4M (English) and 1.8M (Russian) total hours watched on Twitch.

That event was formatted as a double elimination contest between eight teams that qualified. This year’s tournament was significantly more extensive featuring group stage play from March 14-15 followed by a sixteen-team double elimination bracket from March 16-24.

The two Majors of the 2018-2019 Dota Pro Circuit had comparable formats and received viewership on Twitch that would suggest such. PGL’s  Kuala Lumpur Major in November resulted in two channels reaching 4.9M and 4.8M hours watched with averages of 21K and 27K CCV respectively.

Coverage of StarLadder  Chongqing Major on Twitch gave two channels 4.4M (English) and 4.1M (Russian) total hours watched on Twitch from Jan. 18-27. Each posted around 165 hours of airtime leading to an average of 29K and 28K CCV, respectively.

While each Major this season has been run by a different organizer with different methods for broadcasting, not all of which include Twitch, using gaming’s largest endemic platform for streaming as a vehicle with which to view trends can provide insight. Each of these tournaments have had both Russian and English broadcasts receiving high viewership metrics with no one language’s broadcast consistently outperforming the other.

Dota 2DreamhackDreamLeagueDreamLeague Season 11 Dota 2 MajorEnglishGlobalKuala Lumpur MajorpglRussianStarLadder Chongqing Majortwitch