In 2017, 583 different owners won a SLB championship.

In 2018, that number was up to 644 (which is the highest it's been since 2014).

This year it's still very early, but 42 owners have already championships, which would be a pace of ~900 for the year.

Maybe this is an indication that SportsHub has actually been able to start pushing a good amount of new owners to the game?

Sounds encouraging.

or maybe the guys who know how have left the sim

I don't think so. Most of the top players from the last 5ish years are still here

Certainly isn’t bad news and gives reason for hope

I think extrapolating the numbers to date is a useless exercise. A lot of the guys who have won already are going to win more. You would expect fewer unique new champions in each sequential chunk of time.

Agreed, but that doesn't change the fact that last year was up as a whole.

Yeah, last year seems like a good sign. That said, I'm not seeing a lot of new faces in the Theme League Classifieds.

GD Dynasty participation is down about 25% over the last year or two

Posted by bagchucker on 1/19/2019 8:45:00 PM (view original):
GD Dynasty participation is down about 25% over the last year or two

Yep... and I haven't been able to get a new, 24 owner, theme or prog league up and running for a couple of years now.

That's anecdotal. I filled a new 24 owner theme league in 24 hours a few months ago.

sometimes a good commish with a good theme can still fill one fast, but a lot more themes these days only go 16 teams is my impression