The official Nickelodeon Twitch Channel hosted the first-ever Nicktoon Throwdown Invitational tournament in honor of the new PC and console video game “Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl.” In the week-long event, 8 esports champions competed for the prize while Nick Stars and the game’s developers introduced the ins and outs of the amazing new game through exhibition matches and in-depth commentary.
We set two goals for the week of streams- maintain an average of 1k viewers per day and create organic buzz/coverage in the esports and gaming community.
The five-day Twitch activation sought to establish Nickelodeon’s presence in the esports world with the highly anticipated release of Nickelodeon’s All-Star Brawl. We provided a series of can’t miss content that would spark conversation with the broadest possible audience on the platform. Our multi-day approach led us to curate five streams that would showcase entry points for players of all expertise levels via 1v1 exhibition matches and the best of the best competing for a coveted 1st place price ($5k and a bucket of Nickelodeon Slime). All streams included commentary from Nickelodeon talent and All-Star Brawl developers who shared insider knowledge and touted the highlights of each match.
Securing Nickelodeon talent as well as the right esports pros for our audience was a new challenge for the team. Finding overlap with like-mined gaming content and that community was key to our talent brief and imperative to dipping our feet into esports.
Promotion included organic and paid posting across Nickelodeon Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts with supplemental social promotion from our top-tier esports pros, sharing their excitement for their involvement in the tournament.
The Nicktoon Throwdown Invitational activation ranks in the top five Nickelodeon streams to date. The week of streams amassed over +236k total views on the platform, with days 1-4 averaging 7k total viewers per day. We continued to see growth over the course of the activation with over 200k viewer coming back to the channel for the Nicktoon Throwdown Finals, 667% above benchmark for concurrent viewers. Our impressive roster of competitors and exhibition players brought in 28% new viewers to the Nickelodeon channel, generating buzz in the gaming community and establishing Nick as a home for emerging esports. As a result of Nicktoon Throwdown Invitational Tournament, the Nickelodeon Twitch channel’s following grew 16% over the course of the tournament, which is 50% higher than our prior multi-day stream activation.
Chatter for the Twitch tournament kicked off with press coverage of the activation in trade publications like TheGamer and ScreenRant. Additionally, we supported our activation with organic Twitter, Facebook & Instagram efforts across Nickelodeon and property handles, reaching 19MM users and generating 1K mentions across platforms. Our impressive roster of pro-gamer talent reached an additional 1.3MM users and share of overwhelmingly positive social sentiment for the game and the tournament structure.
In conclusion, this activation far surpassed our primary and secondary goals as we successfully drove excitement for the new Nickelodeon All Star Brawl Game and the brand presence on Twitch.
