The NHL ESports community received some devastating news regarding the NHL Gaming World Championship series
The NHL ESports community received some devastating news regarding the NHL Gaming World Championship series
Breaking news rocked the NHL ESports community, and not in a positive way.
As per the EA Sports NHL 24 World Championship Discord channel, the NHL Gaming World Championship series will be put on pause going forward. This announcement came via an admin in Discord which wrote:
The inaugural NHL Gaming World Championship took place in Las Vegas in 2018. Erik "Eki" Tammenpää, an 18-year-old native of Espoo, Finland, won the $50,000 grand prize, and the NHL’s future in ESports appeared bright.
The NHL went all out for their first GWC, having the event played out at the Luxor Hotel & Casino, and their streaming numbers and attendance looked promising.
Matthew “Top-Shelf-Cookie” Gutkoski won the 2019 event and as per escharts.com, the average viewership on Twitch for the event went up exponentially from 16,190 the year before to 49,484.
However, since then, and maybe the COVID-19 pandemic has been part of the blame for this, viewership has dropped off along with prize pools, and hosting efforts for LAN events.
The 2023 World Championship dropped off significantly in viewership, averaging a lowly 3,275, and peaked at 20,401. Yikes. Although the players did get to play out in sunny Nashville in a beautiful setting.
We were unable to find data for the NHL 24 World Championship Finals, but maybe that's a good thing.
The writing was on the wall when the NHL 24 North American Championships were played out of the NHL’s flagship store in New York. I mean this was embarrassing for the NHL ESports scene. Customers were walking through the store shopping while a “Professional” gaming event was taking place in the middle of the store.
Then, the NHL 24 World Finals were held at OS Studios in New York, with no audience, after always having the finals played out in front of a live audience (excluding the pandemic years).
It was evident that the NHL was less inclined to invest money in the NHL Gaming World Championship LAN events this year.