The 2021 Overwatch League wrapped up this past weekend, after a terrific few days of playoffs followed by the Grand Finals. Shanghai Dragons beat Atlanta Reign 4-0 to secure their first championship. As it turns out, they did so in front of the largest OWL audience yet.
The 2021 Grand Finals matchup now holds the record as the most-watched Overwatch League match of all time, according to viewership stats that the league shared with me. OWL uses a metric called average minute audience, or AMA, which is the average number of people watching the broadcast at any given minute.
Shanghai’s sweep of Atlanta had a global AMA of 1.68 million, which is an 8% increase from the 2020 Grand Finals. Until now, that was the most-watched OWL match ever. Global AMA figures for Grand Finals have increased every year since the inaugural season in 2018.
On YouTube, there was an AMA of 218,000. That marked a 36% increase from last year’s Grand Finals. The Overwatch League told me that’s the highest figures it has seen on YouTube to date (OWL broadcasts were on Twitch for the first two seasons).
In China, Grand Finals viewership increased by 5%. That’s an impressive bump, given that Chinese fans were watching in the morning. The 2020 Grand Finals match was in primetime in that part of the world. Having a popular team from the country go a couple of steps further than they did last year surely bolstered Chinese viewership.
It’s also worth noting that OWL broadcasts streamed exclusively on Bilibili in China this season. In the past, fans there were able to watch on multiple platforms.
The record-setting broadcast capped off a great year for OWL, which had a terrific season despite a number of external factors weighing against it. Global viewership also increased for the tournaments, compared with last year (save for June Joust, which was new in 2021).
The Grand Finals closed the first major chapter in the history of competitive Overwatch. When the 2022 Overwatch League season starts, it will be on an early build of Overwatch 2. Hitting a new viewership high is a heck of a way for the league to say goodbye to Overwatch 1 (and 2CP).
Overwatch League Grand Finals Match Sets New Viewership Record - Forbes
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