This year's Overwatch League grand finals in Philadelphia saw a bump in viewership, the Overwatch League announced this week, with global AMA (Average Minute Audience) in at 1.12 million. That's a 16% increase from last year's grand finals that took place at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
AMA is the average number of people watching a broadcast at any given minute. The number comes from calculating the total minutes watched and dividing it by the total minutes broadcast. On the domestic side, U.S. AMA was at 472,000, a 41% bump.
Looking at key demographics, U.S. AMA for ages 18-34 was up 182,000 year over year, a 13% increase.
"Seeing global growth of 16% year over year for our grand finals is very promising heading into 2020, where the Overwatch League becomes even more accessible to our global market," said Strategy and Analytics Lead for Activision Blizzard Esports and Overwatch League Kasra Jafroodi.
Activision Blizzard partnered with longtime data and measurements firm Nielsen earlier this year to track both Overwatch League and Call of Duty League viewership. The Nielsen partnership will aim to accurately gauge viewership for these events, helping Activision Blizzard strike accurate investing and advertising partnerships. Grand Finals metrics both evaluated linear TV and online viewership.
"We're fully committed to transparency and ensuring all numbers we share are comparable and accurate," said Jafroodi. "We have been industry leaders in developing standardized, third-party verified metrics to measure viewership and audience growth."
For 2019, Nielsen evaluated online streams on Twitch, Zhanqi, CC, Huya, and Bilibili, and ABC for US linear television.
It wasn't just online and television viewers watching the event, so too were 12,000 fans that filled a sold-out Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Everyone there witnessed an absolute thrashing by the San Francisco Shock against the Vancouver Titans in what became a clean 4-0 sweep.
There are some key differences that should be noted when comparing 2018 and 2019 numbers. In 2018, competition was divided between two days to include semi-finals and grand finals. It was also simulcasted on ESPN and DisneyXD. This year, the ABC network television took on the linear broadcast.