Esports World Cup Viewership Count – Which game was the most watched?
Published: Aug 6, 2024 - Last Updated: Aug 7, 2024
While the Esports World Cup aims to be the most prestigious esports festival out there, the viewership needs to back up this claim. With a few weeks of competition concluded, we’re taking a closer look at EWC Viewerhip thus far.
EWC Peak Viewership Statistics
While there are several measures for viewership, peak viewership provides insight into the maximum potential while average viewership describes the consistency of viewership. Typically, tournaments with high viewership over the best Esports World Cup betting opportunities.
Providing public access to the peak viewership statistics, the following tabulated list features statistics from Esports Charts.
| Esports World Cup Title | Peak Viewers |
|---|---|
| League of Legends | 1,113,492 |
| MLBB Mid Season Cup | 2,382,990 |
| MLBB Women's | 265,117 |
| Riyadh Masters (Dota) | 419,244 |
| Call of Duty: Warzone | 135,281 |
| Free Fire | 471,483 |
| Counter-Strike 2 | 756,764 |
| PUBG Mobile World Cup | 566,118 |
| Overwatch 2 | 100,188 |
CS2 Viewership was a Major let down
As one of the leading esports, Counter-Strike 2 was always destined to feature at EWC. Featuring a $1,050,000 prize pool and 15 international teams, the community compared this tournament to the most prolific CS tournaments – Majors.
While the talent and the prize were present, the viewership simply wasn’t – here’s how the CS2 EWC statistics compare to the top 4 viewed CS2 tournaments:
- #1 – PGL Major Stockholm 2021 – 2,748,434
- #2 – PGL Major Antwerp 2022 – 2,113,610
- #3 – PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 – 1,853,954
- #4 – BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 – 1,528,724
- #? – CS2 EWC 2024 – 756,764
Almost less than half the viewership of recent Majors, the CS2 EWC viewership was a Major letdown with no obvious reason as to why.
LoL Viewership got boosted by T1 fans
Following the Mid-Season Invitational 2024 breaking records for non-Worlds peak viewership, high expectations surrounding the LoL EWC tournament.
Featuring a global presence and a $1,000,000 EWC prize pool, all the ingredients for a recipe for success were present, even if Riot Games didn’t support the tournament.
While viewership started off slow, the combination of T1’s popularity and their hard-fought brought to the Finals which they ultimately won, contributed to a peak viewership of 1,113,492.
In terms of proportionality, this seems like a success – viewership statistics are better than that of common regional leagues (such as LCS Spring 2024 at 246,184 peak viewers) but less than the top league (LCK) and international Riot Games tournaments (MSI & Worlds).
Dota viewership is in clear decline
The Riyadh Masters 2024 tournament is in a unique position of having a previous iteration to compare to. Both tournaments featured identical numbers and quality of teams, duration of the tournament and venue, the only difference being the 2024 tournament suffering a reduction in prize of $10,000,000 (from $15M to $5M).
Here’s how the tournaments stack up in terms of viewership:
- Riyadh Masters 2023 Peak Viewership – 587,891
- Riyadh Masters 2024 Peak Viewership – 417,495
Besides suffering a year-on-year decline, Riyadh Masters 2024 is not the most viewed Dota tournament in 2024, with PGL Wallachia achieving 487,000 peak viewers with only $1,000,000 of prize pool.
The community has discussed causes, including a boring Grand Final due to the “aura deathball meta” and more commonly, poor production quality.
You may also be interested in:
Mobile Legends – Leading the Charge
The Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Mid Season Cup rebranded for 2024, drawing some concern over viewership. Following the success at MSC 2022 and 2023, the esports beloved by the Southeast Asian region managed to clock in over 2.3 million peak viewers.
Some reasons for the slight decline include the rebranding and moreso, the timezone difference challenging SEA viewers – though we’re not too worried.
So far, that puts Mobile Legends: Bang Bang head and shoulders above any other esport in terms of viewership which begs the question – why was MLBB so much more successful than other esports?
Likely, the fact that the tournament was integrated into the competitive ecosystem of MLBB captivated the community’s interest, rather than it being a random third-party tournament with only prize at stake and an epic grand final.
What’s more? The MLBB Women’s Invitational 2024 is currently the fourth most-viewed female esports tournament of all time.
We’ll keep an eye out for further viewership trends as EWC continues.
