Blizzard, MLG, TwitchTV execs speak on rise of eSports

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, Major League Gaming CEO Sundance DiGiovanni, TwitchTV COO Kevin Lin, and Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey spoke on the "explosion of eSports" at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference recently.

The panel came together after last year's inaugural eSports panel at the conference, which saw DiGiovanni and Morhaime joined by Evil Geniuses Owner Alex Garfield and Starcraft personality Sean "Day9" Plott.

Disclosure: the panel was moderated by Rod Breslau, author of this post.

The four came to talk about the meteoric growth of eSports and competitive gaming within the last year, which saw record-breaking viewership from MLG, as well as Riot Games' Season 2 Championships.

"When we launched TwitchTV, we were at 5 million monthly unique viewers showing predominantly eSports content," Lin said on Twitch's own record-breaking growth. "By February 2012, we were up to 14 million uniques, and now this February we were just shy of 30 million uniques per month."

"On an event weekend, we'll see at its peak 6.5 million people tune in, 400,000 to 500,000 people concurrently," DiGiovanni added. "While we can't relate that directly in a apples-to-apples way to traditional TV, in the 18-24 age market, we weigh out very favorably towards things like BCS games, and ESPN's broadcasts of the NBA and baseball."

A video of the presentation is available below.