ESLIEM Katowice 2022 has entered the list of the most-viewed CS:GO events of all time after peaking at over 1 million concurrent viewers on the final day of the event.
The showpiece competition came to a close on February 27 with an intense and balanced-out final between FaZe and G2 Esports that was not reflected by the 3-0 scoreline. Fans tuned in by the hundreds of thousands to watch the best-of-five grand final, which hit a peak viewership of over 1.1 million viewers during the marathon game of Mirage, according to statistics website Esports Charts.
ESL- PGL Major 2021 — 2,748,850
- ELEAGUE Major 2017 — 1,331,781
- ELEAGUE Major 2018 — 1,329,096
- IEM Katowice 2019 — 1,205,103
- IEM Katowice 2022 — 1,122,015
https://twitter.com/EsportsCharts/status/1498053147058708483 The semi-final between G2 and NAVI almost broke the 1 million viewers mark but ended up hitting a peak that was just shy of 980,000. Of the five most-viewed matches of the tournament, four of them involved G2, who posted an average viewership of 475,845 people – over 100,000 more than NAVI (372,694) and tournament champions FaZe (350,782). These are exciting times for CS:GO esports. After a rocky year with multiple scandals and the threat posed by a rising competitor in Valorant, the scene seems to be on the up in the highest echelons thanks in large part to the return of in-person events with a crowd.
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The next such tournament will be PGL Major Antwerp, slated for May 9-22. In a recent interview with Dexerto, PGL CEO Silviu Stroie vowed to raise the bar for this event after the Stockholm Major felt somewhat underwhelming from a storytelling perspective and was dogged by production and technical issues.