A lot has changed in the three years since the last major LAN Fortnite tournament. Not only did the world experience a global pandemic that prevented in-person events with large crowds, but Fortnite itself waned in popularity.
Viewership for the Fortnite Champion Series 2022 invitational this past weekend was down sharply from the World Cup in 2019, but given the transformation of the gaming marketplace, it’d be best to hold off on the old cliche of calling Fortnite a “dead game.”
With a peak of 381,915 viewers across Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube, the two-day international tournament averaged 260,360 viewers over 11.5 hours of airtime, according to Esports Charts. The figures allowed it to amass more than 3 million hours watched.
The figures didn’t come close to the peak of more than two million that the battle royale had for its first-ever major in-person competition in 2019, but the difference between viewership for each event reflects the more realistic and stable expectations that the game has after exploding onto the scene.
Led by Ninja’s ascent into mainstream relevance, Fortnite shattered viewership records in 2018 with just under 1.34 billion hours watched on Twitch, according to Sully Gnome, but after the breakout year, the game immediately saw a decline as other battle royales entered the space, taking away from its share of the market.
While Fortnite, dipped below League of Legends in 2019 and 2020, it stayed above 1 billion hours watched and was second place on the platform as Ninja’s exodus led to Tfue becoming the platform’s top creator for 2019.
In 2021, the game maintained relevance as a top five category on the platform, and in the past year, the game is still one of the top 10 most-watched on Twitch. Though it may appear to be a shell of the game that it was originally hyped up to be, this year’s FNCS Invitational marks a new beginning for the game, even if it might be more modest than some anticipated given the fanfare of its early life.
Published: Nov 15, 2022 01:34 pm