Not everyone is excited for the Overwatch League it seems, as popular adult entertainment site YouPorn claims that the esports program is killing its viewership entirely. This is all based on only the first week of the League, considering the second week of the season just kicked off a couple of days ago with some exciting matches.
YouPorn posted some graphs (via Comicbook), giving an idea of how its traffic has completely tanked during only the times that a major game in the Overwatch League was being aired online, but fine any other moment of the day. For example, during the first game alone that streamed last week on January 10th at 7 pm EST, viewership for YouPorn dropped to nine percent less than its typical average for that time.
As the Overwatch League’s first match between San Francisco Shock and Los Angeles Valiant drew to a devastating close, the traffic gradually climbed back towards the average number before dropping off once again around 12 am EST during the third match of the night.
This trend continued on day two of the Overwatch League with a similar drop in traffic, particularly the lowest being around 8 pm EST at the height of the amazingly tense match between Philadelphia Fusion and Houston Outlaws. It is uncertain if this is a trend that will continue as the Overwatch League chugs on.
This comes as no surprise, though, as traffic for the League has been off the charts despite being so new. At its peak last week, there were 437,000 concurrent users watching a game at once with an average of around 200,000 users watching every second of the matches.
