The OWL (that’s the Overwatch League for those not in the know) has finished its first official week of gameplay and the numbers are in. If anyone was hoping OWL would crash and burn, they will be sorely disappointed with the results. However, for all the noise the hype train has made preceding it, it certainly didn’t knock it out of the ball park. Where the OWL was weakest, however, was at the analyst’s desk.

By the numbers, the OWL did pretty good. Its first day of streaming games came in at 370k peak viewers – which is an impressive start for any esport. However, the following games of the week came in with significantly fewer viewers. Day two saw a drop of about 30%, 130k viewers, to put it at a peak of 245k. Day three stabilized with the drop off only measuring 2000 viewers. By Day Four, viewers dropped again by nearly 20%, putting the final game of the week at 195k peak viewers. But the real question is – how good or bad is this really?

For an esport, this is still quite good. It can be expected that viewers will peak on a premier day, and it can also be expected that viewership will peter out as the week goes on as all the rubberneckers stop to see what the fuss is about. That said, the OWL also began to see a drop at the halfway point in broadcasting. Viewership saw a drop of 50k in Day 2 halfway through, and a much more dramatic drop of 100k in Day 3, with numbers continuing to slip throughout the day. However, while overall numbers were the lowest for Day 4, they were the most consistent, without any drops throughout broadcast.

For an FPS, maintaining interest can be hard. The fights are chaotic, sometimes confusing, and if the trackers are choosing the wrong heroes to follow it can make the experience frustrating. Also, while the studio was amazing for the broadcasts, and the quality fairly high throughout, the analyst’s desk was by far the weakest part of the whole production.

While Blizzard may have felt poaching MonteCristo and Crumbz from League of Legends was a good move – considering they are both quality analysts with good presences – it gave the desk a feel of inauthenticity. While MonteCristo has a legacy across many esports, both analysts have professional backgrounds in League of Legends, and while they have both proven an ability to cast for many games, their expert insights and analysis in League was valuable because of their professional experience with the game. The crossover to Overwatch simply doesn’t have the same impact. They did a solid job, but their perspective on the game seemed more like that of a viewer and a student, not a professional giving insights.

It also didn’t help that many helpful features were simply missing from the broadcast, such as an after game analysis. Instead of breaking down the salient points of a match after its culmination, the broadcast would simply stay on the players waiting for the next round to start with little for the viewer to do. And if a match was finished and transitioning to the next stage, the broadcast would cut immediately to ads and then to a waiting screen for the next match.

The OWL has plenty of potential, and even if it continues to bleed numbers, it has a long time now to build a supportive audience. But poaching casters from another esport isn’t just bad manners – it’s stupid. They are experts in the field in which they worked, not the one which they have now been hired for. Blizzard also needs to step it up on their pre and post game setups. For now, the feeling of the OWL is a lot of excitement but without a lot of experts, and that doesn’t make for the most enticing experience.