I've tried doing that... watched a few episodes of Critical Role etc but it never clicked for me. I also tried it with just audio podcasts of such, but many of them feel staged rather than actual play (that is they edit it to an extreme).

I generally do not like watching others play games. The only time I was interested is with the game Techno Bowl. I find a hard time finding players to play this game. I also want to see how other play this game as it allows for a wide variety of different types of plays. It is a football boardgame that plays like you're a coach drawing up plays for your team to execute.

I think that showing how a game plays to an audience in a video needs to really improve. If you look at how poker is shown on TV, you will notice that the audience gets to see the entire state of the game. That includes information hidden from other players, namely the players' hands. All of that information is shown graphically on the screen. The size of the pot, blind level and size of individual bets are also shown graphically on the screen. All of this information is necessary for the audience to understand the state of the game. If you just show a video of the table, the audience will generally have little or no idea what is really going on and it makes it difficult for the audience to appreciate the game.

I've watched videos of Magic: The Gathering. At the time, I wasn't a hardcore player anymore, so when they name certain cards, I have no idea what many of them do. For a MtG broadcast, they really need to do the same thing with poker. They need to graphically show the hands of each player as well as the table state. When a new card is played, they need to pause, show the card and perhaps give an explanation of why that card is played an how it interacts with with is on the board or other cards in a player's deck that has yet to be drawn. This is the information I as a view want in order for me to understand what is going on.

They need to do the same thing with boardgames. Take a game like Ticket to Ride. You need to show the audience each player's hands in a graphic. You need to show the board and state. You need to show the score. The commentary can indicate how close the active player is to completing certain routes. You need to show cards that are draw, etc. A lot of this needs to be shown graphically. TTR is not a very complex game and still needs a decent amount of graphic support for a view to fully appreciate what is happening in the game and to be able to follow the game. So far, I have not seen anything like this in order for me to be interested in watching a play through of the game.