Ravi Iyer
Ravi Iyer turns esports and livestreaming audience data into clear stories about how competitive gaming is watched across titles and platforms. He covers tournaments and events for Esports Charts, a masthead focused on esports viewership, popularity, and analytics. He also writes about livestreaming platforms, creator awards, and top channels for Streams Charts.
Esports viewership across leagues and events
Iyer’s core beat at Esports Charts is the performance of major esports tournaments in terms of peak viewers, average audiences, and overall popularity. In one recent piece on the Road to MSI 2026, he notes that the LCK has now produced three events surpassing two million peak viewers.
He tracks League of Legends competitions across seasons, including regional league coverage that highlights how the LCK is surging while the LCS struggles to keep pace.
His work also includes recaps of LPL 2026 Split 2, where Bilibili Gaming’s third straight title anchors his look at the competitive story of the league. Across articles on League of Legends regional leagues and monthly rankings of the most popular esports tournaments, he shows which events gain or lose traction with viewers over time.
Mobile esports and regional dominance
Mobile esports is a major strand of Iyer’s coverage, with detailed recaps of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Free Fire tournaments. In his overview of the most popular mobile tournaments of 2023, he ranks events by peak viewers to identify which titles and competitions command the largest audiences. His reporting on the M5 World Championship focuses on new viewership highs for MLBB, tying the tournament’s performance to the broader growth of the game’s competitive scene. He returns to Free Fire repeatedly, from a long-range look at the most-watched Free Fire tournaments - where FFWS 2021 and Brazilian teams dominate - to a breakdown of how Free Fire at the Esports World Cup 2026 delivered the title’s most popular event in four years.
These pieces show how he uses audience metrics to explain shifts in regional strength and title momentum within mobile esports.
Event formats, broadcast choices, and co‑casting
Iyer often links viewership outcomes to how events are produced and presented. His article on the 2026 Pokémon World Championships centers on co‑casting as a key driver of audience numbers, drawing a connection between broadcast experimentation and engagement.
In League of Legends, his regional league analysis pays attention to how structural changes and competitive narratives contribute to differences in popularity between leagues like the LCK and LCS. At multi‑title gatherings such as the Esports World Cup 2026, he breaks down club and game‑specific watch time - highlighting, for example, Team Vitality’s lead in club viewership - to show how event formats create winners in attention as well as in results.
This focus on format, casting, and scheduling marks his work out from straightforward match recaps.
Livestreaming platforms, creators, and awards
Beyond traditional esports, Iyer covers the broader livestreaming ecosystem for Streams Charts, where he tracks how creators, platforms, and awards shows perform in front of live audiences.
He reports on events like League Awards 2025, noting viewership totals as star players such as Chovy take home headline prizes. His pieces on YouTube Gaming’s top channels and Rocket League streamers in specific quarters detail which creators are rising, which platforms they use, and how their numbers compare.
He writes guides and announcements around high‑profile community events, including the Streamer Awards 2025 and Hololive x Twitch’s Holoday 2025, combining practical information on nominees, tickets, and schedules with clear audience context. Profiles of figures like Fanum and JasonTheWeen trace individual journeys from early careers to livestreaming success, while articles on issues such as viewbotting explain technical challenges that affect the integrity of audience metrics. Taken together, this strand of his work shows a consistent interest in the intersection of competitive gaming, creator culture, and the business of livestreaming.
How‑to coverage and viewer‑friendly explainers
Iyer regularly produces how‑to and explainer pieces that help readers navigate complex event calendars while staying grounded in the numbers. On the esports side, his coverage of Valorant Champions 2026 includes how to watch details, dates, teams, and tournament structure so that viewers can follow the event from qualifying rounds through the finals. In livestreaming, similar guides for events like Caedrel’s League Awards and Holoday 2025 lay out schedules, formats, and viewing options alongside concise summaries of why these shows matter in the wider ecosystem.
His combination of clear, practical information with attention to audience scale makes his work useful for anyone tracking how competitive gaming and online broadcasting reach their fans.
4 more gaming journalists.
Aaron Astle
Aaron Astle covers the business of mobile games through data, company strategy and cross-platform trends. He is Features and Data Editor at PocketGamer.biz and has written more than 2,000 articles for the publication. His beat includes game performance, revenue, player numbers, market share, monetisation, longevity and location-based games. He covers leadership changes, studio restructures, trade bodies, publishing decisions, investment and platform relations. He also reports on mobile, console and PC compatibility, live operations, regional marketing, hardware and app store rules. His work includes interviews with publishers such as King, Scopely, Cygames, Sybo and Rovio, plus year-in-review features for 2024 and 2025. He combines news, interviews, performance data and product timelines in clear analysis. He also contributes to the Week in Mobile Games podcast and event coverage.
Aaron Down
Aaron Down stands out for practical, systems-aware coverage that helps players navigate complex PC games and the platforms around them. He is a guides writer at PCGamesN and a staff writer at The Loadout. His work covers strategy games, live-service updates, codes, online worlds, simulation and management games, and classic titles being remade. He writes about League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics from long experience with both, with a focus on depth, meta shifts, and long-term mastery. His PCGamesN work includes strategy round-ups, Guild Wars 3 news, and reviews such as Two Point Museum. His writing has also appeared in The Digital Fix, Medium, Newsbreak, Flipboard, and other gaming platforms. He reports in clear, direct language, focusing on verified information, game systems, player access, and how platforms such as Steam shape discovery.
Aaron Potter
Aaron Potter is a franchise-focused games journalist who judges big-budget console and PC releases as parts of longer stories. At the Mirror’s gaming vertical, he writes reviews, release-time explainers, deal guides and commentary across PlayStation, Xbox, PC and Nintendo. His beat includes narrative-driven action games, horror, superhero epics, fantasy RPGs, co-op shooters and major series such as Marvel’s Spider-Man, Star Wars Jedi, Resident Evil, Dragon’s Dogma and God of War. He also covers launch times, platforms, Game Pass, crossplay, pre-orders, discounts and AAA ports, helping players decide what to play and how to buy it. With more than eight years in games journalism, prior freelance work and a book on indie games, he compares new releases with their predecessors, weighing storytelling, polish, innovation and value.
Adam Starkey
Adam Starkey stands out for writing about how games feel to play day to day. At Metro, he covers console and PC games, with a focus on Nintendo, fighting games and competitive titles, and he mixes reviews, news and commentary on major releases and hardware. He writes clear, player-focused criticism on mechanics, monetisation, accessibility and local multiplayer appeal. He also reports on live service systems, trailers, reveals, studio statements and consumer issues such as PS5 Pro scalpers. Beyond Metro, he works as a freelance entertainment journalist across games, TV, film, music and esports, with work published in NME, Rolling Stone UK, Radio Times, Edge, Nintendo Life and VG247.