麦格理-全球-电子竞技行业-电子竞技行业洞察：Fortnite表现稳定-2019.5.31-24页 (2).pdf

Please refer to page 22 for important disclosures and analyst certification,or on our website May 2019 Global EQUITIES Thematic Reports:LINK1,LINK2,LINK3 Prior eSports inSights:Reaching a New Apex Macquaries Top Picks with Favorable Exposure to eSports Publishers:ATVI,EA,TTWO,Tencent,NetEase,Perfect World Hardware:MSFT,Sony,INTC,Media:AMZN,FB,GOOG,DIS Analysts Macquarie Capital(USA)Inc.Benjamin Schachter +1 212 231 0644 Ed Alter +1 212 231 1272 Angela Newell +1 212 231 6600 Macquarie Capital Limited Wendy Huang,CFA+852 3922 3378 Ellie Jiang +852 3922 4110 eSports inSights Fortnite Stable;Twitch Top 10 Unchanged Y/Y Key points Fortnite Season 9 saw 25mm hours watched in its first week,even with Season 8 and down only 12%from Seasons 6 and 7 despite much more BR competition.Apex Legends viewership dropped 53%m/m for March,53%for April and 44%for May.EAs guidance for the game is achievable,but next content must work.Entering the slower summer,the top 10 games on Twitch in May were the exact same as last year,and were also the top 10 for each week of May.Key eSports Takeaways from May 2019 Fortnite Season 9 launches even with Season 8 Fortnite had 25mm hours of content watched on Twitch in the first week of Season 9,even with Season 8 and down slightly from 28mm in Seasons 6 and 7.Fortnite viewership has remained relatively consistent since Season 6 last August,largely shrugging off the competition from CoD and Apex.In addition to Season 9,weekly$1mm Fortnite World Cup qualifiers helped sustain viewership in the closing weeks of Season 8.GTA maintains#3 rank The GTA roleplaying trend on Twitch increased hours watched by 514%from the week prior to the trend to its peak at 21.5mm hours watched,rising to the#3 game on the platform.Since that peak,weekly viewership has dropped to a more consistent 17mm hours/wk where it has been for the past 5 weeks,but also maintained its#3 ranking.TTWO does not directly monetarily benefit from the GTA roleplaying trend,but does tangentially benefit from increased overall engagement with the GTA.Apex down but not out After breaking viewership records with its release,hours watched have declined 59%m/m for March,53%for April,and a further 44%for May.Weekly hours watched have declined each week since week 2,with the exception of launch of the battle pass,falling out of the top 10 for each week in May.At this point Apex is tracking closer to that of Call of Duty than challenging Fortnite.While Apex hasnt been able to sustain its early momentum,the main catalyst remains content.The games next content drop is expected in late June,where EA has said it is devoting more resources to creating Apex content after the reception to the first battle pass.SuperData is reporting that Apex made$24mm in April,which on a yearly run-rate would reach the low end of the$300mm-$400mm guide.We believe the guidance is achievable,but will need a positive reaction from the next content update to do so.Overwatch League mixed results for Stage 2 Viewership for Stage 2 of the 2019 season of the OWL started below last year and Stage 1 of this year,but progressively improved,culminating in the best week since week 3 of the season.The stage also included a successful test for geolocation next year,with the fist home games in Dallas drawing the highest viewership of the regular season so far this year,as well as executing on the production of the event.Hearthstones first 2019 expansion sees y/y viewership drop Hearthstones newest expansion and the first of 2019,Rise of Shadows,reached 10.8mm hours watched in its first week,the second lowest of the last seven card sets and down 26%y/y from last years first expansion.Weekly viewership has been on a downward trend since the launch of MTG Arena,which is providing the most competition in digital card games to Hearthstone since its launch in 2014.Macquarie Research eSports inSights 31 May 2019 2 Fortnite Launches Season 9 Content;Strong Viewership Remains Stable Season 9 begins even with Season 8 Fortnite kicked off its 9th season of content with 25mm hours watched on Twitch in its opening week.This is even with the launch of Season 8 in March,but both remain the lowest opening weeks for Fortnite season since the game reached its full-scale popularity last April with Season 4.Overall viewership for Fortnite has remained relatively consistent since the start of Season 6 in September,only dipping for the releases of Call of Duty battle royale and Apex Legends.In fact,since Apex started to cool off in March,viewership has increased m/m for both April and May.The catalysts have been the Fortnite World Cup qualifiers,which started mid-April,and now the start of Season 9 in May.Fig 1 Season 9 launches even with Season 8,but both are lowest since last April for Season 4 Source:Twitch.tv,S,Macquarie Capital(USA),May 2019 Season 8 saw stable performance Looking back at the last 4 seasons of Fortnite content,Season 8 which ended in May was one of the outliers,remaining relatively stable throughout its 10 weeks.Season 8 began three weeks after the launch of Apex Legends which caused the large dip at the end of Season 7,and had one of the strongest closing weeks of any of the recent seasons driven by the World Cup qualifiers.Fig 2 Fortnite seasonal viewership performance Source:Twitch.tv,S,Macquarie Capital(USA),May 2019 19333728282525243437272623230510152025303540Season 3Season 4Season 5Season 6Season 7Season 8Season 9Weekly Hours Watched(millions)Week 1Week 2152025303540Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10Weekly Hours Watched(Millions)Season 4Season 5Season 6Season 7Season 8Season 9Macquarie Research eSports inSights 31 May 2019 3 Fig 3 Fortnite Viewership since release of Battle Royale.Viewership is stabilizing Source:Twitch.tv,S,Macquarie Capital(USA),May 2019 0.00.51.01.52.0050100150200250Sep-17Oct-17Nov-17Dec-17Jan-18Feb-18Mar-18Apr-18May-Jun-18Jul-18Aug-18Sep-18Oct-18Nov-18Dec-18Jan-19Feb-19Mar-19Apr-19May-Peak Viewers(Millions)Average Viewers(Thousands)Peak viewers(Right)Average Viewers(Left)3456Season 2789Macquarie Research eSports inSights 31 May 2019 4 GTA Explodes in Popularity;Retains#3 Rank GTA strength continues The GTA roleplaying trend rocketed viewership for the game up the charts in March to the#3 spot on Twitch,and has retained that ranking since.From the week before the GTA roleplaying craze hit,to its peak in early April,weekly hours watched for GTA on Twitch climbed 469%from 3.7mm to 21.5mm.Since that peak,weekly viewership has progressively dropped to the 17mm hours mark where it has been for the past 5 weeks,but has maintained its#3 ranking by a considerable margin.Some of the dip has been from the natural progression of news trend losing steam over time,as well as some of the big streamers that made the category popular in the first place returning to their original games,citing some burnout from playing GTA constantly.However,somewhat surprisingly,many home-grown GTA roleplaying streamers have capitalized and have been filling that void,sustaining overall viewership around the 100K average viewer mark.This trend is what needed to happen for a game like Apex Legends to sustain a top ranking,and its surprising to see it happen for a 5-year old game rather than a new one.Limited financial impact for TTWO While the resurgence of interest in GTA has been remarkable.The direct monetization opportunities for TTWO are limited.The roleplaying servers that the viewers are largely watching are private modification servers with unique rules,not the official GTA Online servers monetized by TTWO.The increased attention on the game has likely resulted in some lapsed players returning to GTA Online,and new players from the 110 existing copies of the game checking it out for the first time,but TTWO confirmed on its most recent earnings call that there is no direct monetization from the trend.Fig 4 GTA viewership;putting the recent boom in perspective Source:Twitch.tv,S,Macquarie Capital(USA),May 2019 Fig 5 GTA weekly Twitch Rankings Source:Twitch.tv,S,Macquarie Capital(USA),May 2019 050100150200250300350020406080100120140Peak Viewers(Thousands)Average Viewers(Thousands)Peak viewers(Right)Average Viewers(Left)GTA Roleplaying02468101214161820Apr-17May-17Jun-17Jul-17Aug-17Sep-17Oct-17Nov-17Dec-17Jan-18Feb-18Mar-18Apr-18May-18Jun-18Jul-18Aug-18Sep-18Oct-18Nov-18Dec-18Jan-19Feb-19Mar-19Apr-19May-19GTA RoleplayingMacquarie Research eSports inSights 31 May 2019 5 Apex Legends down,but not out Apex Legends Twitch Viewership continues to slide After an exceptionally strong release,including the best week for any game ever on Twitch in week 2,Apex Legends viewership on Twitch has declined almost every week since.From its opening month in February,average concurrent viewers declined 59%for March,a 53%m/m for April,and a further 44%for May.The surprise nature in which the game was launched and the early results was encouraging,but the results since have been largely disappointing.While Apex viewership remains above Call of Duty,it has trailed PUBG each of the last five weeks.Financial impact The actual underlying player numbers likely have not experienced as much of a variance as viewers,never being as high as the initial viewership nor as low as it is now.However there has almost assuredly been a dip in players after initially reaching 50mm registered players in its first 30 days.SuperData is reporting that Apex Legends generated$24mm in April,down for the second month from its originally reported$92mm in February.EA has guided to revenue for Apex of$300mm-$400mm which implies stabilization to reach the low end,and growth to hit the top end.To reach those targets Apex will need to deliver against players expectations for new quality content throughout the year.Content in the catalyst The initial drop in viewers from setting all-time highs was largely inevitable,as a significant portion of the early views were driven by large streamers that came over from other games,and in the subsequent handful of weeks returned to their old games and brought their audiences back with them.So while some drop-off after the initial weeks was expected,the bull case was for engagement to stabilize(possibly in the 10-15mm weekly hours watched range in a bullish scenario)and maintain from there,similar to what Fortnite has been able to do.The catalyst to create such stabilization needs to be content that keeps existing players engaged and brings back lapsed ones.The best chance for that stabilization occurring for Apex,was the launch of its Season 1 Battle Pass on March 19 that added new content and challenges into the game.However,the content added with the battle pass largely did not live up to players expectations,and the slide in viewership continued(and we expect overall engagement with the game as well).Given the lead-time needed to create content,its very likely that the majority of the content in the first battle pass was in development long before the launch of the game in early February,before EA and Respawn had any idea just how successful the game would be when it launched,and therefore had allocated resources to developing that content accordingly.Now that EA and Respawn have a better gauge of the appetite for content and the larger opportunity for Apex,it appears that the company has increased the development resources for the game.It has been reported at Respawn developers previously working on another Titanfall game for this year have shifted over to creating content for Apex and the other game is now on hold.If Apex engagement is going to rebound,it will most likely be because new compelling content is added to the game.The next large content drop is likely season 2,expected in the back half of June.Fig 6 Battle Royale Viewership since the launch of Apex Legends Source:Twitch.tv,S,Macquarie Capital(USA),May 2019 3140302217121210865443326191921252323202323232624242524051015202530354045WeekPriorApexWeek1Week2Week3Week4Week5Week6Week7Week8Week9Week10Week11Week12Week13Week14Week15Weekly Hours Watched(Millions)Apex LegendsFortnitePUBGCall of Duty:Black Ops 4Macquarie Research eSports inSights 31 May 2019 6 Viewership patterns for Apex closely resemble Call of Duty The hot start and subsequent fall(while still maintaining a top 20 ranking)closely resemble the launch of last years Call of Duty:Black Ops 4.This downward sloping trendline is the most common for newly launched games(though these two are on a much larger scale),but is nonetheless disappointing as both games attempted to capture what has made Fortnite such an enduring success.In the most recent weeks Apex has actually fallen below where Call of Duty was at a similar 16 weeks post-release.Fig 7 Apex Legends is following the trajectory of Call of Duty Black Ops 4,no longer challenging Fortnite for the top ranks.Source:Twitch.tv,S,Macquarie Capital(USA),May 2019 31403022171212108654433320281311876564433454051015202530354045ReleaseWeek 3Week 5Week 7Week 9Week 11Week 13Week 15Weekly Hours Watched(Millions)Apex Legends Hours WatchedBlack Ops 4 Hours WatchedMacquarie Research eSports inSights 31 May 2019 7 Overwatch League Stage 2 Starts Below Stage 1,Finishes Higher Overwatch Stage 2 viewership Overwatch Stage 2 saw mixed results,with weekly viewership starting significantly below Stage 1 this year and Stage 2 last year.However,viewership trended upwards throughout the Stage,finishing noticeably above Stage 1 from March.It is also worth pointing out the nuances from the schedule vs.last year.For Season 1 the stage finals were part of week 5,and for Season 2 they are now their own week.Stage 2 saw a 29%boost in viewership for its finals over Stage 1.Additionally,last year there were 12 matches played each week,and this year there are 16 games played four of the five weeks,and then one week with only 8 matches.For Stage 1 that was week 5 with 5.2mm hours watched,and for Stage 2 it was week 4 with an improved 6.2mm hours watched.Stage 2 finals see improved linear performance The Stage 2 finals were broadcast on ABC,with Nielsen reporting an AMA of 535,000,making it the best performing esports broadcast ever across ABC/ESPN/Disney linear channels.Home game proof of concept a success Ahead of a full season of home games next year,there are three trial“Homestand Weekends”this year.The first homestand weekend was in week 4 of Stage 2 where the 8 matches that week were all played at a sold out 4,500 Allen Event Center in Dallas Texas.The broadcast itself in terms of quality and production was largely identical to any other week of the OWL,and the two days were the most watched days of the regular season so far.The weekend did show that the geolocation of the OWL has merit,and the sold-out crowd added a“homefield”atmosphere for the first time,as 77%of the tickets sold were to buyers from Texas.Homestands in Atlanta and LA will take place during stages 3 and 4.Execution for the full rollout in 2020 will be key,but th