ELeague’s debut season concluded this past Saturday, with TBS drawing 201,000 viewers for the broadcast from 4:00-6:46pm ET and Twitch drawing a season-high 103,000 concurrent streams. The finale of the “Counter Strike: Global Offensive” competition also saw a peak of 168,500 concurrent streams on Twitch, which was a record peak figure for ELeague. During the 10-week season, there were 25 million live video streams on Twitch for live event coverage. TBS for its 10 ELeague telecasts averaged 247,000 viewers. The best audience came in Week 2 with 386,000 viewers. For comparison, ELeague was below the NHL regular-season average on NBCSN (378,000 viewers) and the current MLS season on ESPN/ESPN2 (312,000 viewers), but above the ’15 WNBA regular season on ESPN/ESPN2 (202,000 viewers) and ’15-16 college basketball regular season on FS1 (109,000 viewers). Part of Turner Sports’ aim with ELeague was to increase its young male viewership, and it succeeded in doing so with these Friday night windows. TBS saw its audience among males 18-34 jump 97% compared to telecasts in the same window last year, which usually consisted of syndicated shows. The lead-in on TBS for all but two ELeague telecasts was "The Big Bang Theory," with the reruns typically averaging over 1.5 million viewers. The Eleague finale on Saturday afternoon had a movie lead-in that drew only 673,000 viewers (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
A DIFFERENT DYNAMIC: In this week's SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, John Ourand writes e-sports is “different than any other U.S. sports property” in that it “uses television to supplement digital, where it is a cornerstone on platforms like Twitch.” Turner Sports Exec VP/Production & Chief Content Officer Craig Barry said, “Esports will always be a native digital property.” Barry said that ELeague Season 1 was a “learning experience” and that execs from both Turner and WME-IMG will “make some tweaks to the schedule.” Barry said that that season “went on too long -- both the 10-week season and the 30 hours of programming across digital and TV each week.” Barry added the ELeague schedule needed more "do-or-die tension during the competition,” similar to that seen during the NCAA Tournament (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 8/1 issue). ELeague GM Christina Alejandre said of Season 1, “I don't mean to sound very Pollyanna, like everything's groovy, but it actually has been very fantastic. The team (at Turner Sports), even though they don't come from a traditional esports background, come from a sports background. We have a select few on my team that have decent esports backgrounds. Everybody is so willing and open to learn about esports and what's right for esports.” She added that the “main goal is to improve for the future.” Alejandre: “We're constantly trying to get better, innovate and evolve. So if I say, 'No, everything was perfect, everything was fine,' that'd be a load of bull. You know it, and I know it" (ESPN.com, 7/31).
