# Co-Streams Near Half of Esports Viewing as Official Hours Dip > Esports Charts found co-streams drew 49.4% of hours watched at 15 major events ending in Q3 2026, up from 43.6% for the 2025 editions, while official feeds slipped. - Source: https://esports.observer/co-streams-near-half-of-esports-hours-watched-q3-2026 - Published: 2026-10-23 - Section: Business - Category: Media Rights - Publisher: Esports Observer (https://esports.observer/) --- Creator-run broadcasts, known as co-streams, accounted for 49.4% of all hours watched at 15 major esports tournaments that ended in the third quarter of 2026, according to a new Esports Charts report published on October 22, 2026. The same events drew 43.6% from co-streams in their 2025 editions, and the official broadcasts lost hours over the year. The esports outlet Pley reported the full set of numbers on October 23. A co-stream is a broadcast of a tournament run by a streamer or another independent channel, with its own commentary, next to the organizer's official feed. The report is one of the clearest recent measures of how much of the audience now watches that way.
49.4%co-stream share of hours, up from 43.6%
+19.7%change in co-stream hours watched
-5.4%change in official-feed hours watched

Esports Charts data for 15 tournaments that ended in Q3 2026 compared with their 2025 editions, as reported by Pley on October 23, 2026.

## What the report compared Esports Charts looked at 15 major tournaments that finished in the third quarter of 2026 and set each against its 2025 edition. The report names eight of them: PUBG Mobile World Cup 2026, BLAST Open Fall 2026, the Battlegrounds Mobile India Masters Series Season 5, the Esports World Cup Dota 2 and Counter-Strike events, the LCK 2026 season, the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Mid Season Cup 2026 and LEC Summer 2026. The other seven are not listed in its text. It tracks hours watched, the total time viewers spent watching, split between the organizer's official channels and community channels. Across the 15 events, Pley reported, official broadcasts fell from 289.6 million hours to 274.0 million, a drop of 15.6 million hours or 5.4%. Co-streams rose from 223.7 million hours to 267.7 million, a gain of 44.0 million hours or 19.7%. Combined viewing grew from 513.3 million hours to 541.7 million, an increase of 5.5%. That arithmetic explains the headline. The co-stream gain was nearly three times the size of the official loss, so total viewing rose even as the official feeds shrank. Co-streams moved from 43.6% of the combined hours to 49.4%, the share Pley's headline described as almost half. In its own text the report said community broadcasts accounted for almost 50% of hours watched across the group. Put in shares, the official side went from 56.4% of combined hours to 50.6%, a fall of 5.8 percentage points that mirrors the 5.8-point rise on the community side. Of the 28.4 million hours added in total, the co-stream gain of 44.0 million more than covers the 15.6 million the official feeds lost, which is how a combined increase of 28.4 million hours can sit beside a decline on the official channels. These shares and differences are computed from the totals Pley reported, not taken from the report itself, and they depend on the 15 events being comparable from one year to the next. ## Where the growth came from The report names the events that moved the most, and the picture is mixed. At PUBG Mobile World Cup 2026, total hours, community contribution and official channels all rose, and the event had the largest absolute increase in community watch time, narrowly ahead of BLAST Open Fall 2026. At BLAST Open Fall 2026, community and total hours grew with average audience, while official watch time was essentially flat. The largest percentage increase came in India. At the Battlegrounds Mobile India Masters Series Season 5, the community share of viewing rose from 11.4% to 51.2%, and the number of tracked community channels climbed from 83 to 675. Esports Charts noted that part of that growth may reflect broader tracking coverage rather than audience growth alone. At the Esports World Cup Dota 2 event and at BGMI Masters Series Season 5, community growth outweighed losses on the official side, so total hours ended higher. At the LCK 2026 season and the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Mid Season Cup 2026, creators gained viewing but not enough to offset the official broadcasts' decline. In all, ten events recorded total hours growth, and four saw official-feed hours fall by more than 3%, according to the report. ## When more hours do not mean more viewers Two Counter-Strike events show why hours and audience can move in different directions. Hours watched depends on how long a broadcast runs as well as on how many people tune in, while average viewers is the typical audience during the broadcast. At the Esports World Cup Counter-Strike event, Pley reported, hours watched nearly doubled from 14.0 million to 26.8 million, and airtime rose from 41 hours to 91. Average viewership nevertheless fell 13.4%, from 341,020 to 295,431, while the peak rose from 739,029 to 1,038,760.
Esports World Cup Counter-Strike, 2025 and 2026 editionsEsports Charts figures
Measure20252026Change
Hours watched14.0 million26.8 million+91%
Airtime, hours4191+122%
Average viewers341,020295,431-13.4%
Peak viewers739,0291,038,760+41%

Esports Charts figures as reported by Pley on October 23, 2026. Percentage changes for hours, airtime and peak are computed from the figures shown.

Esports Charts noted that the broadcast schedule grew along with the viewing time, which is the setting in which hours can climb while the average audience falls. The figures in the table bear this out: dividing hours watched by airtime gives roughly 341,000 viewers per broadcast hour in 2025 and about 295,000 in 2026, which matches the reported averages. In other words, more than twice as many broadcast hours, produced a lower average audience in every hour even though total hours nearly doubled. It made the opposite point about the LCK, where a shorter schedule produced fewer hours watched despite more viewers on average. Pley also reported BLAST Open Fall 2026 at 23.7 million hours, 280,966 average viewers and a peak of 849,574 for the grand final, taken from the Esports Charts event page. ## The creators behind the numbers The report points to a small group of channels at the largest events. At LEC Summer 2026, five community channels, run by Caedrel, Ibai, Kamet0, Tolkin and Trayton, accounted for more than half of the tournament's total viewing, according to Esports Charts. At PUBG Mobile World Cup 2026, Snax Gaming was the largest contributor among the leading community channels. The report gave no individual figures for either list. Esports Charts also noted that its channel rankings count each platform separately. A creator who streams on two platforms appears as two channels, so the rankings describe channels and not distinct people. ## How Q3 fits the longer trend The Q3 result can be set beside an earlier reading. In its October 13 decade review, Esports Charts said community broadcasts drew 46.7% of all watch time across major esports titles in the first half of 2026. The Q3 share of 49.4% covers a different set of 15 events, so the two numbers are not a continuous series, but they point the same way. The idea is not new. In a decade review published on October 13, 2026, Esports Charts recalled that community casters generated 56.2% of the 25 million hours watched at VCT Masters Reykjavík in 2021. That event is a single tournament in a single game, so it shows how early the pattern appeared in some games, not that the overall share has risen or fallen since. A September analysis by Streams Charts of selected Esports World Cup 2026 co-streaming channels added who watches them. It put India at 12.2% of co-stream hours, driven by PUBG Mobile, and English broadcasts at 30.4%, with Russian at 11.8%. No single country reached 13%, and the top three countries together made up 32.1%. The same analysis showed how local the audiences are game by game. For PUBG Mobile, India, Nepal and Türkiye together made up 77.5% of the analyzed co-stream viewing, and for the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Mid Season Cup 2026, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia made up 73.6%. In Counter-Strike, Russia accounted for 35.6%, and for League of Legends the analyzed channels drew 30.4% of their viewing from Vietnam. Streams Charts said it examined selected channels only, and it excluded official broadcasts. The platforms carrying these streams are shifting too. In the October 13 review, Esports Charts said Twitch and YouTube together hosted 86% of esports watch time by the third quarter of 2024, while Kick's esports watch time grew 66% in the second quarter of 2026. Neither the Q3 report nor Pley's account splits the 15 events by platform, so the Q3 figures do not show how much of the co-stream gain came from any one service. ## What the data can and cannot show Esports Charts was careful about what its numbers prove. Its conclusion was that co-streaming can accompany growth in tournament viewing, and that community growth frequently coincided with higher overall viewing, but that a rising co-stream share does not by itself establish additional reach. The report's text does not define hours watched or average viewers, and does not describe a full methodology. It also gives two counts of events where community viewing grew by more than 3%, and they do not agree with each other. The summary totals come from Pley's account of the Esports Charts data.