ESL Pro League S19 ends with five-year low in peak viewership
ESL Pro League Season 19 was an incredible watch for North American viewers, who saw BOSS, Complexity, Liquid, and M80 challenge some of the best teams in the world. Complexity and Liquid certainly surprised many as they advanced to the semifinals and quarterfinals, respectively, marking Jason Lake's best-ever finish in the event.
While the competition was electric, the production team behind ESL Pro League also stepped up their game by creating high-quality sketches in between game breaks and introducing more relaxed tri-casts to some of the group games that would otherwise be monotonous.
The overall content turned out to be a winner as Esports Charts reported that average viewership increased 35% year-over-year to reach 155,000 concurrent viewers. However, the downside to the event was that peak viewership was just not there.
At 377,365 viewers, this marks the 10th highest overall peak viewership for the flagship event, but it is the lowest since the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals in 2019 when peak viewership was 365,159.
Esports Charts suggests that peak viewership was low due to the final having two of the lesser-watched teams: Vitality and MOUZ. The European organizations were ranked 14th and 15th in terms of average viewership amongst all tournament participants. Additionally, with FURIA, Imperial, and Sharks not progressing into the playoffs, ESL Pro League suffered from Brazilian fans tuning out from the competition.
Given that ESL Pro League also adjusted the format for the latest season, Esports Charts notes that other metrics like Hours Watched cannot be truly considered in comparing prior events. The biggest positive for the organizer is that average viewership significantly improved year-over-year, which will remain a solid takeaway for the production team in measuring success for this season's event.
