On the crest of The International. August CIS Content Overview

Every day, eSports organizations post dozens of posts at various venues. Who does this cool and effective, and who is not? Let’s look at an example of a social network VKontakte

From August 15 to 25, one of the most anticipated tournaments for the entire e-sports community was held – The international 9. This event is interesting not only from a sports point of view, but also from a media point of view – in a short period of time just a bunch of interesting material comes out. Whose material turned out to be interesting for the average viewer, who raised the audience at such a large-scale event and why we are analyzing it in the article.

Audiences of organizations in August

Let me remind you that the CIS region on The international only two teams represented: Virtus.Pro and Natus vincere. Two of these clubs, by coincidence, were not only the most powerful representatives of the region in terms of sports, but also in terms of media resources. Such a major tournament strengthened the position of mastodons of the CIS scene, leaving the rest of the clubs far behind. By tradition, the analysis presents seven organizations from the CIS: Natus vincere, Virtus.pro, Winstrike team, Gambit esports, Team empire, Team spirit and Vega Squadron.

Infographics of the number of subscribers of seven eSports organizations from the CIS

In August, the audience of four teams grew at once. The most interesting thing is that each of the “remaining positive” organizations, with the exception of Virtus.Pro and Natus vincere, different reasons for audience growth. The Bears and Born to Win raised their audience by participating, in a sense, even failing, at The International. Audience growth was seen in the early days of the group stage of the main tournament of the year and continued until the final day. At Virtus.Pro the increase is more significant due to the fact that exactly under The International was launched special offer timed to the start of the tournament.

Gambit esports raised their performance through a large-scale draw, which I wrote about in the previous article. Thus, during the rally, the Gambit audience grew by approximately 23,000 people.

Team empire gained its audience growth thanks to the sporting principle, as well as Natus vincere together with Virtus.Pro. Only the Imperials, unlike their counterparts, did not fail the tournament, but confidently took first place in Six Major Raleigh 2019 by Rainbow six siege. Thus, representatives of the Empire took not only the main prize in the form of a champion title and $ 500,000, but also recorded new fans in their assets. Amid an increase in the audience of other organizations, the results Team empire, of course, quite modest, but this is due to the rather ambiguous coverage of major Rainbow Six Siege tournaments from e-sports media in the CIS. Maybe after such a big victory, media interest in this discipline will increase?

As for the organizations “gone negative”, then everything is simple: Team spirit disbanded rosters on CS: GO and Dota 2, Vega Squadron did not keep the leaders of previous qualifications for Dota 2 and dismissed the composition for CS: GO. Winstrike team confidently lose an audience for a year for the reasons that I will assume in subsequent materials.

Activity of organizations in August

All organizations, even those that did not participate in The International, were marked with posts on the main tournament of the year in one form or another. Thus, the activity of clubs over the past month amounted to such indicators:

Infographics of the number of publications of seven eSports organizations from the CIS

The main “meme” of the CIS e-sports in the person of Team Empire SMM-manager could not miss such large-scale events and was marked by 475 publications per month (15.3 posts per day), leaving far behind the representatives of other clubs. In general, it can be seen that, compared with the hot qualification July, the activity of content managers has fallen, which, in principle, is quite logical.

Analysis of publications

Today in modern SMM there is a trend for video content. Video materials gain statistics in a brighter way, a person perceives information from a video series better than from a picture. Let’s take a look at the situation with video content in the CIS e-sports:

Graphs of segmentation of laid out content by type

Any video series refers to video content: whether it is a product of many hours of editing with youtube or a 10 second clip with twitch. The eSports environment is capable of organically generating video content

As can be seen from the graphs, Virtus.Pro did their best to use the media potential of the main Dota tournament of the year and the share of video content amounted to almost half of all publications. Specially for The International, the media department of the bears prepared special thematic videos for announcements and meeting results.

Following the “bears” is Team Spirit, which, by the way, launched a meta on the video announcements and results in the CIS segment. Looks like team presentation no less interesting than Virtus.Pro.

The three leaders are closed by Natus Vincere, which is famous for its work in the media sphere: almost a quarter of publications for August fell on video content. It is worth noting that “Born to Win” did not resort to an innovative way of representing teams and did announcements and results in the old way in the form of pictures.

In general, it is clear that organizations are trying to follow trends and are introducing interesting new tools for CIS eSports. I think that from the beginning of the next season, gradually all teams will come to at least a video presentation of the teams and abandon the pictures.

Publication Performance

The number of publications does not mean their quality. The quality of publications can be assessed using the engagement rate (ER), which is calculated as the ratio of all activities (likes, comments, reposts) to the number of views of the record. The higher the ER value, the more interesting the laid out content for the audience.

Infographics of average ER publications of seven eSports organizations from the CIS

The permanent leader of this rating in the person of Team Empire beats all its past performance: the increase in ER compared to July amounted to as much as 0.17%, and this with such a huge number of publications.

Participants at The International also increased their performance quite significantly: Virtus.Pro’s ER value grew by as much as 35.19%, and Natus Vincere’s by 27.42%.

Team Spirit and Gambit Esports remained at about the same level as a month ago, but Vega Squadron lost ground: publications of the content manager of “sharks” became less interesting to the audience by 8.14%. The Winstrike Team is traditionally doing badly, even despite the “Bright Boom” show that caused great interest from the audience.

Post Views

You can do it as if on a publication conveyor, have crazy engagement rates, but nobody will care about it without views.

Infographics of the number of views of publications of seven eSports organizations from the CIS

And here is the effect of The International on the face! Simply unrealistic growth rates of publication views at Virtus.Pro – as much as 71.7%. The increase in Winstrike Team’s views is directly related to the release of the interesting show “Bright Boom”, Team Empire received its portion of additional views thanks to the victory in the Rainbow Six Siege tournament.

The drawdown of Vega Squadron is also quite understandable – after the extravaganza at the regional qualifications at The International, the team announced the withdrawal of leaders from the organization, thereby extinguishing interest in the team.

Gambit Esports lost views only formally: the difference of 15.81% is due to the draw last month, the publication of which gained nearly 900,000 views.

The reasons for the drawdown in Team Spirit views are explained by the dissolution of two teams at once: CS: GO and Dota 2.

Review Summary

● The International is such a resonant tournament that even a failure in it attracts a lot of new users to the team’s social networks

● In the CIS, there is a trend towards reformatting the visualization of content, which is slowly but surely preparing us to increase the share of video material.

● The aggregate average ERs gradually increase every month

By tradition, 5 facts for dessert: