Ever since the Overwatch League died, Overwatch esports have been a bit of a depressing talking point in the industry. The Overwatch Championship Series hasn’t hit the same. The hype has largely disappeared, although some exciting teams remain.

When I saw that the OWCS Champions Clash had such an incredible viewership jump — with 290,600 peak viewers (during the lower bracket final, weirdly enough) and 5.4 million hours watched, two times that of last year’s — I thought, “Wow, people care more about Overwatch esports than I thought.”

And some esports fans felt the same, noting the varied meta and how many heroes were played (41 out of the 51). The audience in Tokyo, Japan was also very passionate during the broadcast. But that’s just a small part of the story.

Most esports events have drops these days, which are in-game awards fans can earn by watching the tournament for a certain amount of time on Twitch. But most of these drops are somewhat lame. I mean, it’s free stuff so people still want it. But it has often been sorta throwaway cosmetics.

But the OWCS went super hard this time around. For the Champions Clash, the Twitch Drops included skins for Kiriko, Hanzo, and Mizuki, as well as esports loot boxes, and other exclusive cosmetics. These were huge, especially for those who collect skins.

When news broke that the Champions Clash had a ton of viewers, most fans admitted it was due to the improved drops. It really made all the difference.

But that doesn’t mean nobody likes Overwatch esports.

Ever since Overwatch 2 dropped the “2,” added a bunch of heroes, and made other massive changes to the game to bring it back to the spirit of the original, the game has been exploding. After the Season 1 re-launch, Overwatch had over 165,000 concurrent players at one point.

And they have stayed, with the player count often reaching six figures. With the gameplay changes and added heroes, the meta has felt a lot healthier and more entertaining. This has improved the Overwatch playerbase.

And with a larger playerbase comes more people looking for exclusive drops. They may not necessarily care about the esports itself, but they can’t pass up a chance at having these special skins and loot boxes.

However, the drops were just the initial draw.

“I know drops are a huge reason why, but this was genuinely one of the best majors in years. Diverse comps and metas, huge upsets on the final day, more individual hero plays than I feel I’ve seen since the original season of OWL, all of the broadcast talent was enjoyable, and for me, most importantly, the fans at the arena were really into it,” said one fan.

Another added: “My friends who never really watch Overwatch esports tuned in for the drops and then were actually thoroughly entertained by the games, despite not really knowing anything about OWCS. Was super cool to see.”

So… Is Overwatch esports back? Not yet… But I think this was a good start. While people came for the drops because they care about the game, that’s a good foundation for the esports side of things. Now that there are more players, more people understand the game enough to watch esports broadcasts.

Now that they’ve checked out the action, maybe they’ll want to see more. And that’s thanks to the exciting matches and talented broadcast talent at this year’s Champions Clash.

We can’t predict if these Overwatch players will stick around. But we can confirm that drops make a huge difference. And other esports events should take note.