Inaugural Overwatch League final pulls in nearly 11m viewers
OWL final sets precedent as first live esports event to be aired on prime time ESPN
Broadcast through both digital and traditional platforms, the first-ever Overwatch League Grand Final pulled in 10.8 million viewers globally.
According to the Overwatch League, this number exceeds the audience for all games from the opening week of 2018.
Two matches were played over two days which saw London Spitfire beat the Philadelphia Fusion 2-0 in a best-of-three series at the Barclays Center in New York.
During opening week however, there was a total of 12 matches in four days.
The finals also set a precedent as the first live competitive gaming to be aired on ESPN's flagship channel during prime time.
Meanwhile, a highlights show broadcast the next day on ABC was the first esports championship ever shown on the network.
Globally, the finals were streamed worldwide via Twitch as well as on MLG; in China, it was broadcast on ZhanQi TV, NetEase CC, and Panda TV.
The Overwatch League estimates the lival global average minute audience -- a Nielsen audience metric -- across both days was 861,205; in the target 18-34 demographic, the average minute audience was 605,013.
Including the rebroadcast views, the estimated average minute audience across both days exceeds one million.