So, the Fortnite esports viewership has not been so great according to this list.
NewZoo has revealed the top 10 most watched esports in 2018, and some of the names missing might shock you. It is fair to say that so far in 2018, esports has continued to get bigger and bigger. The likes of Fortnite and FIFA continue to grow from strength to strength.
However, according to the data revealed by NewZoo, neither of these made it onto the top 10 lists. This is especially confusing considering Fortnite has been dominating Twitch and YouTube’s live streaming sections.
So, who is in the top 10? Well, this tweet from Slasher aka Rob Breslau showed them:
According to Newzoo, here are the top esports games in so far in 2018 by 'esports hours watched' on Twitch & YouTube combined:
1. LoL: 240 Million
2. CSGO: 212M
3. Dota 2: 180M
4. OW: 96M
5. HS: 43M
6. HotS: 19.5M
7. SC2: 17.5M
8. R6: 14.5M
9. PUBG: 14M
10. RL: 13M
11. CoD: 9.5M— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) October 4, 2018
Slasher also revealed why Fortnite was not ranked and it seems to be due to individual streamers not being taken into account. With that being said, the Fortnite channel had been pulling in more than 80,000 concurrent views during a Skirmish event.
Regarding the absence of Fortnite, Newzoo's 'esports hours' consist only of 'content from professionally organized esports competitions and does not include individual pro player streams'. Due to the stream host nature of the Skirmish, it is not counted towards Fortnite's total.
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) October 4, 2018
Interestingly, Fortnite does rank at number 7 on YouTube’s streaming platform. However, with just 0.4m hours of esports content watched, Fortnite pulled in only 1% of total esports hours watched on the platform.
So, are these statistics correct? Well, replying to Slasher tweet, MLG employee Adam Apicella claimed the numbers were way off.
This is wrong. We had more than double this for CWL alone. Also not sure if the totals include VOD on YT per your YT reference, but that would add a lot as well.
— Adam Apicella (@MrAdamAp) October 4, 2018
Will Fortnite get better numbers?
Well, the Fortnite World Cup and Pro-Circuit are set to start next year so we can only imagine it will see a boost. However, with Ninja and co continuing to dominate the platform, the Fortnite Twitch channel may struggle to keep up the pace.
