Magic: The Gathering

MTG Players Tour Twitch views fall severely for Brussels and Nagoya

02/04/2020

MTG‘s coverage of paper events has consistently had a hard time since the introduction of MTG Arena. From rebranding the Pro Tour to Mythic Championships to the Players Tour, Magic seems unsure of how to market its competitive events on the tabletop. Couple this with poor advertising and several bad Standard and Modern formats, and it’s no surprise that official events haven’t received much attention.

The decline from Mythic Championships

Even MTG‘s past Mythic Championships had more views than the latest two Players Tour events. Here are some example stats for comparison:

Mythic Championship VI peak viewers – 29,451
Mythic Championship IV peak viewers – 27,515
Mythic Championship II peak viewers – 25,424
Mythic Championship I peak viewers – 55,552

Based on this, you’d think that viewership would at least break 20,000. Instead, Players Tour Brussels only had a peak Twitch viewership of 17,811, while Players Tour Nagoya only had 6,488. Of course, coverage for the former began at 2:00 a.m. CT, which made viewing difficult for fans in the United States. Also, the Nagoya stream was entirely in Japanese, which likely discouraged English-speaking viewers.

It may also be unfair to compare these numbers to past Mythic Championships. The Players Tours featured Pioneer, a brand new format, for the first time. The format is extremely popular among paper players, but how that translates to the primary audience who tune in to competitive streams is relatively unknown.

For those wanting to catch the next Players Tour event, it will stream live from Phoenix, AZ on Feb. 7-9. It will feature Pioneer again, as well as a draft of Theros Beyond Death. Coverage will thankfully begin at 10:00 a.m. CT, so you won’t have to worry about staying up late to catch the stream. If the previous events are indicative of the meta, expect to see plenty of Mono-Black Aggro and Dimir Inverter dominating the tournament.

Did you catch the last Players Tour, or have you been waiting for the next one coming up? Let us know in the comments below!