How Many Viewers Do the Biggest Esports Tournaments Have?

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By all accounts, the popularity of esports is growing every year: more and more discipline emerges in the industry and that is why tournaments are hosted regularly, the tournaments are getting bigger and bigger, and the industry is attracting more major donors. To continue this growth, we should understand the importance of the influx of new spectators – but is there an inflow in esports, and how many viewers do the competitions have? These are crucial questions, so we are going to examine them further.

How to find out the number of viewers

Sometimes the developers share the numbers and tell the details about the audience of the biggest tournaments. Of course, in this case, you should treat them carefully, as the gaming company has to show their product in the best way, so they reveal only those figures that they consider to be good.

Another way is to use Twitch. You can just enter the platform and see how many people watch the category and how it is correlated with the competitors’ figures. There are services that enable us to see the views in a week, month, year, or at particular tournaments. The most convenient of them is the Esports Chart, we are going to consult with it further as it provides the most important figures: the total number of view hours of a tournament, how many spectators there are on average, the most popular matches, and teams.

Champion – Worlds

The biggest attention is drawn to the esports LoL, and Worlds breaks new records nearly every year. In 2021 the peak number surpassed 4 million viewers and on average the tournament watched almost 1,3 million people. We should note that this number does not include Chinese spectators who must have been even more numerous than the rest of the world so it is a very rough estimation.

Even though the difference was not huge, the audience of the Worlds in 2021 turned out to be bigger than a year before – 3,9 and 1,1 million respectively. These figures show that the audience in LoL is not growing at the same rates as before. However, the game is not world-wide popular, so it has got potential. The Russian-speaking broadcast did not attract the same number of its viewers – their peak number has dropped from 84 to 45 thousand.

eSports

The main pursuer – The International

Dota 2 significantly fell behind LoL in the overall number of viewers but The International is a major brand that calls lots of attention and is keeping close to the Worlds. The peak number of TI viewers has gone over 2,7 million (at TI 9 this figure reached nearly 2 million), and the average is 857 thousand (at the previous tournament – 739 thousand). With good growth, TI 11 may cut the gap to the Worlds at such rates.

Other major tournaments

Another prominent discipline is CS: GO – last May the major drew a huge viewership. The peak surpassed 2,1 million, on average the audience was 586 thousand. Even though in comparison with the previous major the numbers have decreased, it was long-awaited and that time only half a year passed so the result was not bad.

Valorant cannot fight with CS equally but the discipline also has a considerable audience – the Masters in Reykjavik in April was viewed by 416 thousand and the peak was 1,07 million.

You should spot the popularity of mobile games: the 31st Southeast Asian Games tournament in Mobile Legends peaked at over 2,2 million, and on average it was viewed by 612 thousand – excellent results. Riot Games with Wild Rift – a mobile version of LoL – want to catch the same train. On 14 June Icons Global Championship 2022 is going to kick off – a huge tournament in the discipline with a significant prize pool, we will see later what audience it is going to draw.

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