Though the Overwatch League has had a rough year, having to cancel homestands, restructure the league, and move matches to an online format thanks to the effects of COVID-19, their recent May Melee tournament was a "grand success." After seeing the viewership growth and hearing feedback from fans, the league plans to host more events like this throughout the rest of 2020, with details coming next week.

The following was sent to Inven Global as a press release:

“We’re really excited about how the May Melee turned out, and I’m proud of everyone involved for achieving this in a season that never stopped operating during Covid-19. As a league, we have worked hard with our partner YouTube to improve the live esports viewing experience for our fans, making the necessary changes to meet the demands of fans and players alike with the return of viewership rewards and dynamic tournament scheduling.” – Pete Vlastelica, President and CEO of Activision Blizzard Esports  

OWL Viewership Quick Report for the May Melee (Week 16 of the 2020 season): 

• Live Week 16 viewership for the entire weekend was 63k AMA, more than double viewership compared to Week 15 (31k AMA)

• For North America matches, OWL viewership had an increase in live viewership to 68k AMA (compared to 36k AMA for Week 15)
• This is OWL’s best live performance since Week 2 when we only broadcasted NA matches and had a Live AMA of 74k

• Asia matches also saw a massive increase in viewership to 52k AMA (compared to 23k AMA for Week 15)
• The Korea channel performed very strongly and saw live AMA of 14k across all the Asia matches

• Both NA and Asia Finals performed very well.  Peak viewership was during the NA Finals match between FLA vs SFS at 88k
• The peak viewership for the Asia Finals match between SEO v SHD was 77k

• The Overwatch League has been an industry leader in developing metrics to measure esports viewership in partnership with Nielsen in utilizing Average Minute Audience (the average number of people watching a broadcast at any minute during the broadcast, calculated by the total minutes watched divided by total minutes broadcast). In short, it’s how many people are watching the content on average and its exactly how Nielsen measures linear TV.

• Sources:
• YouTube data is pulled directly from YouTube Analytics for each of the OWL channels as verified by Nielsen. 
• China viewership data is pulled from Huya, Bilibili, and NetEase CC platforms and verified by the ABE China Analytics team.

• YouTube Concurrent Viewership showing official match-only live viewership
• (Live+7, the primary viewership metric which consists of the initial live broadcast plus VOD/rebroadcast viewership over the next 7 days will be available at a later date)

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