Esports are a crucial and foundational part of the live-streaming ecosystem. YouTube Gaming and Twitch continue to dominate in this industry, partly due to the boost the platforms receive around various esports events. Some of the biggest channels on these live-streaming platforms are totally dedicated to live broadcasting of esports tournaments and here in this article for Streams Charts, we’ll take a look at the top-performing esports channels in the industry.
Not only will we analyse the top-performing channels of all platforms Streams Charts documents, but also highlight the differences between the two titans of YouTube Gaming and Twitch. Is there a consistent pattern to where Twitch outperforms YouTube Gaming and vice-versa? Read more to find out.
Most-watched esports channels of all platforms for Q2 2023, per Hours Watched
| Rank
|
Channel
|
Hours Watched
|
Platform
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st
|
BLASTPremier
|
18.79M
|
Twitch
|
| 2nd
|
MPL Indonesia
|
17.83M
|
YouTube Gaming
|
| 3rd
|
ESL_DOTA2
|
17.25M
|
Twitch
|
| 4th
|
otplol_
|
10.83M
|
Twitch
|
| 5th
|
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
|
10.56M
|
YouTube Gaming
|
| 6th
|
paragon_dota
|
10.43M
|
Twitch
|
| 7th
|
Overwatch League
|
9.85M
|
YouTube Gaming
|
| 8th
|
Liên Quân Mobile eSports-Garena
|
9.04
|
YouTube Gaming
|
| 9th
|
Riot Games
|
8.92M
|
Twitch
|
| 10th
|
ESL_CSGO
|
8.87M
|
Twitch
|
Looking at all platforms available to our analytical tools, BLASTPremier of Twitch came out just ahead of the competition. Not only content with Twitch, but the BLAST Premier YouTube Gaming channel also ranked within the top ten for the YouTube Gaming specific rankings. BLASTPremier claimed the top spot thanks to the viewership of the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, which was the only 2023 event of the series and final major event for CS:GO before the competitive scene transitions to CS2.
The event, which boasted a prize pool of $1,250,000 USD, garnered just short of 60M Hours Watched; a healthy portion of this viewership went towards the official BLASTPremier channels. Viewership reached its peak of 257K concurrent viewers as FaZe Clan knocked NAVI out of the event in the Legends stage, with a 22–19 victory on Anubis.
A long way away from the historic European Counter-Strike theatre, second place with 17.83M hours of watch time went to MPL Indonesia: the official broadcaster for the Mobile Legends Professional League, the forerunning competitive league for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. MPL Indonesia is by far the most popular region for this league; MPL Indonesia Season 11, which took place between February and April, garnered 73M Hours Watched, cementing the Indonesian region as the strongest for the discipline. Indonesian MPL leagues make up the entirety of the top five most-watched events in ML:BB.
Although only the playoffs for this season occurred during Q2, it still contributed heavily to MPL Indonesia’s watch time. Viewership reached a peak concurrent viewers of 432K at the start of April, and MPL Indonesia continued to broadcast various ML:BB events throughout the quarter, for example, Indonesian streams for the Southeast Asia Cup.
Another podium spot another discipline, ESL_DOTA2 rounds out the top three rankings on our list with 17.25M Hours Watched. The official broadcaster for Dota 2 events hosted by ESL, the channel returned from a ten-month hiatus to return for its coverage of the DreamLeague Season 19. The channel benefited mainly from its coverage of the DreamLeague Season 20 and the ESL One Berlin Major and viewership reached its peak as PSG.LGD and Talon Esports faced off against each other in DreamLeague Season 20’s Group Stage 2. The two Asian rivals faced off halfway through the second Group Stage and PSD.LGD from China solidified themselves as the best Asian team of the event, although they could only manage a third-place finish in the end.
Running down the rest of the rankings, otplol_ follows behind ESL_DOTA2 with a considerable drop-off. Otplol_, a French League of Legends broadcast company, managed to amass 10.83M hours of watch time throughout the quarter. Otp, which stands for ‘one trick pony’, is the primary French broadcaster for any large League of Legends event, and indeed sometimes the only French stream. Otplol_ was live for over 2100 hours throughout the quarter, almost being live for every moment of the three months. They had no lack of matches to cover, Otplol_ covered everything during the summer, from the Korean Championship and EMEA Championship to the local French Division 2 semi-professional scene.
Following close behind them is the official Mobile Legends: Bang Bang YouTube Gaming channel. The ML:BB official account has a lot of overlap with the aforementioned MPL Indonesia account, but the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang channel covers a wider variety of content. The organisation covers international Asian leagues in English but also various events, such as the MPL, broadcasted for an Indonesian-speaking audience. The official ML:BB channel knows its audience well and a lot of its streams cater to the Philippines. Ultimately, the most watched broadcast for the quarter was an MPL Indonesia Playoffs match, which garnered 640K hours of watch time during only six hours live.
Close behind ML:BB with 10.42M Hours Watched is paragon_dota. Paragon Events is a casting studio based out of Kazakhstan, and this account is their Russian-speaking broadcasting channel for various Dota 2 events. Similar to ESL_DOTA2 the channel achieved most of their watch time through Russian broadcasts for the DreamLeague seasons and the ESL One Berlin Major 2023. However, unlike ESL_DOTA2 which reached its viewership during the Group Stage, paragon_dota’s viewership spiked as it covered the Grand Finals of DreamLeague Season 20. During a 21-hour-long broadcast, the channel achieved 533K hours of watch time and a peak concurrent viewership of 91K.
Team Vitality raised the trophy at the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023
Moving below the 10M border, we find Overwatch League on YouTube Gaming with 9.85M hours of watch time. Overwatch is going through a transitional phase at the moment, as the league and competitive scene for the discipline are still adapting to the official release of Overwatch 2. Although the release of a sequel has helped to draw in more viewership, generally the statistics for the league have been heading in a downward direction. The Overwatch League lost their exclusive contract with YouTube recently, but the only place to watch the official League is still on YouTube. In this way, viewership is consolidated into one platform and this helps Overwatch to boost itself over potentially bigger esports disciplines.
Next up is Liên Quân Mobile eSports-Garena, the official Vietnamese broadcaster for Garena Liên Quân Mobile, which is known internationally as Arena of Valor. Arena of Valor is another MOBA mobile game that features a healthy esports ecosystem. The channel draws in solid viewership and reached 9.03M Hours Watched for the quarter. The Vietnamese broadcaster can also boast a high average viewership with 31.9K Average Viewers, ranking fifth in terms of average viewership out of this ranking.
Finally, Riot Games and ESL_CSGO made up the last two spots on this list, respectively, earning 8.92M and 8.87M hours of watch time. Riot Games has quickly become one of the most prolific esports developers in the industry: with the rise of Valorant and the ever-present domination of League of Legends, they have a huge audience available to them. Despite Valorant’s recent growth, the official Riot Games account stayed loyal to League of Legends and streamed broadcasts of the games in English, including rebroadcasts.
Speaking of rebroadcasts, ESL_CSGO made the cut with similar airtime to otplol_. The organisation achieved over 2000 hours of airtime through its constant reruns and highlights of past events. ESL_CSGO also broadcasts live events and reaches the peaks of its viewership during these live events, but the constant rebroadcasts and highlight streams assist the channel to be constantly accruing viewership and building its channel.
Most popular esports channels of all platforms for Q2 2023, per Peak Viewers
Moving to Peak Viewers instead of Hours Watched, MPL Indonesia managed to take the crown away from BLASTPremier. MPL Indonesia reached a huge 763K concurrent viewers during the Playoffs of MPL Indonesia Season 11. The organisation received the highest viewership out of anyone in the industry, almost double what BLASTPremier could reach.
BLASTPremier managed a respectable 440K Peak Viewers during the quarter, which came during the Grand Finals between GamerLegion and Team Vitality. Although a considerable amount short of MPL Indonesia, the organisation reached a new record for itself and, if the teams in the Grand Finals had been fan favourites like NAVI or FaZe Clan, they could have reached even higher.
Liên Quân Mobile eSports-Garena came in third with 336K Peak Viewers and was closely followed by LCK Tiếng Việt with 297K, the Vietnamese rebroadcaster of the Korean League of Legends scene. This ranking is really proof of the size and scale of the Asian live-streaming industry, with Vietnam and Indonesia leading the way for mobile gaming.
The LCK appears multiple times on this list, with four of their channels making the cut. The Vietnamese rebroadcaster remained on top, but the official Korean YouTube Gaming account was close behind with 289K Peak Viewers. Further down the list are the official Twitch Channel of the LCK with 256K and the LCK Global account with 219K, both of these channels are for English-speaking audiences. Interestingly, the channels reached their peaks during three different matches, one at the LCK Summer Playoffs, one at the LCK Spring Finals, and one at the Mid-Season Invitational. The one common denominator between all of these matches is T1, the famous Korean League of Legends team.
The M1 World Championship for ML:BB, via gadgetmatch
The official ML:BB YouTube Gaming account once again appeared in our rankings, this time thanks to the playoffs of the MPL Indonesia Season 11. Despite reaching a peak viewership of 287K concurrent viewers, the event remains a low point for the organisation. At the start of the year in January, the channel reached a new personal record when 459K concurrent viewers tuned in for the M4 World Championship. Following close behind was the official Indonesian PUBG Mobile channel with 264K Peak Viewers at the 32nd Southeast Asian Games. Indonesia is quickly becoming the mecca of mobile gaming esports, and the representation of their viewership on this ranking is no coincidence.
Finally, Riot Games also appeared in their familiar ninth-place-slot with 232K concurrent viewers thanks to the Mid-Season Invitational as T1 faced off against JD Gaming, the Chinese organisation fielding a Chinese-Korean team, who ultimately won the event.
Platform-specific comparison of top esports channels
Leading channels in watch-time for Twitch and YouTube Gaming
In terms of platform separation, the distinct differences between the streams on YouTube Gaming and Twitch are clear to see. Twitch is primarily focused on huge esports events, covering world-known disciplines like CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, and some relatively smaller disciplines like Call of Duty and Rocket League. However, YouTube Gaming appeals more heavily to an Asian audience, where mobile gaming dominates. Not to understate the huge market for PC esports in Asia, but the audience for mobile gaming in Asia is larger than anywhere else in the world.
When it comes to the top Twitch Channels by Hours Watched for the quarter, BLASTPremier was ahead of the back. Channels we’ve already covered like ESL_DOTA2 and paragon_dota also featured, but following behind we’ve some new faces: starting with VALORANT_jpn. Valorant deserves an honourable mention, as despite the overall low viewership for the VCT Masters Tokyo event, the Japanese audience was booming. Japanese Valorant channels are featured not only in the Twitch ranking but also on the YouTube Gaming side.
Turning to the YouTube Gaming side, mobile gaming esports unsurprisingly dominated the sphere. The Indonesian community were by far the strongest in terms of viewership. MPL Indonesia took the top spot, followed by the ML:BB account whose most successful streams are for an Indonesian audience, and finally capped off by PUBG MOBILE Indonesia, which received 6.8M Hours Watched.
Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines were also represented by, respectively, LCK, Liên Quân Mobile eSports-Garena, and MPL Philippines. The MLBB eSports channel, which took the last spot on the list, is a multilingual broadcaster for various Mobile Legends: Bang Bang events. The channel streams not only in English, but also Filipino, Khmer, Malay, and Indonesian, a standardised form of Malay. Allowing the esports channel to cover a variety of games in a variety of languages has allowed the channel to access a wider and more diverse audience, resulting in enough Hours Watched to rank within the top ten for YouTube Gaming.
In fact, the only channels which are primarily English-speaking on this list are Overwatch League and BLAST Premier. It seems unlikely that the only English-speaking games on the YouTube Gaming rankings coincidentally happen to be for traditional PC esports. The divide between YouTube Gaming and Twitch remains to be an issue of market domination. Twitch is overall the larger platform and performs strongly worldwide, but YouTube Gaming is building up a strong niche for itself within the Asian market, specifically within the mobile gaming subsection of this market. Stay up to date with Streams Charts for all updates as these platforms continue to grow and evolve alongside one another.
