Major League Gaming’s 2011 Pro-Circuit appears to have brought eSports even closer to the mainstream this year, as it announced this past season has become the largest in professional videogame competition history.
During the circuit’s National Championships in Providence, RI, the event gathered over 3.6 million hours of consumed video by viewers, who tuned in from 175 countries, and peaked out at with over 241,000 of them watching concurrently. These results put the National Championships viewership over that of popular cable networks such as MTV, Comedy Central, TNT, and FX, according to Nielsen’s network ratings metrics.
“Our viewership numbers this year have been staggering and MLG now pulls in larger audiences than several traditional television cable networks,” MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni said. “Our live streams of the Pro Circuit National Championships garnered more 18-24 male viewers than Comedy Central, MTV, TBS, and FX draw in an average quarter hour and nearly as many as Adult Swim.”
Over the course of the entire season, MLG viewers consumed over 15 million hours of video while over 3.5 million unique visitors browsed its website, the latter of which is a 225 percent increase from 2010. The site also saw 641,000 visitors every weekend.
At the events themselves, a total of 97,000 people showed up in attendance to watch the competitions live with the biggest single event taking place in Anaheim, which saw a crowd of 20,000 strong.
This is the fifth straight season that MLG has built upon the success of the circuit that preceded it. The 2011 Pro Circuit also sported a record-breaking prize pool of $1 million.
To see several of the stats in graphic form, just scroll below and take a look.
