To this point in the Overwatch League’s 
season, every week has included four days of contests that averaged around four matches a day, but going into the final week of the first stage, only eight matches were played across just two days.
Despite the lighter than usual schedule, the league’s stage one playoff push helped it muster up stronger average viewership than it did for week five of stage one last year. However, the fewer hours of airtime kept it from registering a comparable hours watched total for the weekend.
Live coverage on Twitch, including alternate-language channels, averaged 144.5K concurrent viewers in week five for a total of 2.24M hours watched across the weekend. That average is up from an 111.45K CCV for live coverage on the same channels last season, but the total hours watched is down from 3.58M hours watched in 2018.
Most of the season there has been a year-over-year increase in total coverage due to the league’s expansion to 20 teams, but this week the Overwatch League only had eight contests in two days, down from 12 contests across four days during the final week of stage one in 2018. That difference in airtime significantly hinders any ability to make meaningful year-over-year comparisons for total hours watched on the week.
Instead of having three contests each day from Wednesday until Saturday, this year the league had four matches on Saturday and four matches on Sunday to close out competition for the first stage of the regular season and solidify OWL’s first stage playoffs of the season that will begin Thursday and be played through Sunday.
With much less live coverage this week than last week, OWL managed to average more CCV than it did last week. The 144.5K CCV average this week was up from week four’s 131.3K average.
The weekend’s peak of 159K CCV came around the middle of Saturday’s broadcast. The third contest of the day between the Boston Uprising and the Dallas Fuel went to a decisive fifth map and had playoff implications. The Fuel simply needed to win in order to make the stage playoffs. Instead, the Uprising won and snuck into this weekend’s bracket as the eighth, and last, seed.
On Sunday, the Houston Outlaws also had a chance to make it into the playoffs by beating the Atlanta Reign, who were also vying for a stage playoff spot. The 3-1 win by the Reign drew the days peak CCV of 154.5K.
While Twitch remains the primary platform for measuring viewership habits of the core Western esports audience, it does not represent the totality of Overwatch League viewership. Fans can watch action on OWL’s official website, Battle.net, and MLG. Additionally, matches are streamed in China on Zhanqi.tv, NetEase CC, Bilibili, and Huya, and Blizzard also has a deal to broadcast matches on Disney-owned platforms including ESPN, ABC, and Disney XD.
