Overwatch League Ropes in 10M Viewers Week One

Blizzard spent a lot of time hyping up the Overwatch League that started not long ago. As it turns out, lots of gamers were interested in watching the very first match in league play. Blizzard has announced that the first week of league play raked in over 10 million viewers.

The season started in LA with four days of matches between 12 teams that are participating in the League event. Blizzard got a bit more specific with the numbers stating that the 10 million figure was for people who watched the first wave of competition across all networks. The content was on Twitch and Activision’s MLG service.

International partners include ZhanQi TV, NetEase CC, and Panda TV. The actual number of viewers was likely higher as Blizzard points out, many people watch together on one screen. Twitch and MLG alone saw a peak concurrent user record of 437,000 during the first battle between Dallas Fuel and Seoul Dynasty.

Blizzard says that it sold all tickets to the Blizzard LA Arena where the event was held for the entire first week. The first season of Overwatch League runs through June and playoffs start in July. Twitch is at least getting some return on that $90 million investment to get streaming rights for league matches reports Gamespot.