Was the Esports World Cup 2024 a viewership success?
The Esports World Cup (EWC), the world’s largest multi-title esports event, has concluded. EWC 2024 took place over two months and featured more than 20 tournaments, hundreds of players and dozens of organisations from all over the world.
Aimed to be a one-stop event for all esports fans and enthusiasts, the event’s viewership has become an evergrowing topic of discussion. With the event taking place in Saudi Arabia, some sections of the community boycotted the event due to the country’s human rights record, particularly towards LGBTQ+ and Women’s rights. However, now that the event has finished, how many viewers did the $60m (~£45.4M) tournament ultimately attract?
This article dissects Esports World Cup’s viewership, game-by-game, to find out how the tournament ranks among its direct competitors. A total of four games had more than 500,000 peak viewers and 15 games in total had more than 100,000 peak viewers at EWC. The lowest number of viewers watched racing simulation game Rennsport, and the most successful game in terms of viewership was mobile MOBA Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
All data provided is courtesy of esports data and metrics platform Esports Charts and does not include Chinese viewership. It should also be noted that Esports Charts was an official partner of the Esports World Cup.
League of Legends
The Esports World Cup’s League of Legends tournament was one of the competition’s first events to be held this year, in early July.
The event saw fan-favourites T1 walk out victorious over Chinese organisation Top Esports. Overall, the tournament was a success in terms of viewership. 1.1m viewers watched the event at its peak, along with just over 566,000 average viewers. With just 22 hours of air time, the event was the fourth most-watched League of Legends event in 2024. Only international event MSI (2.82m peak) and Korea’s two LCK splits (2.65m for Spring, and Summer is ongoing but has reached 1.27m peak viewers) have performed better so far this year.
Counter-Strike 2
By many metrics, Esports World Cup’s CS2 tournament could also be seen as a success. Taking place in mid-July, the CS2 tournament at EWC recorded 756,000 peak viewers and an average of 238,000 viewers with 43 hours of air time. This places the tournament in fifth place amongst the most popular CS2 events of the year, behind the likes of IEM Dallas (823,000), IEM Katowice (972,000), IEM Cologne (1.05m) and the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 (1.85m).
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
The most-watched event at the Esports World Cup 2024 was the MLBB Mid-Season Cup, which concluded in mid-July. The mobile MOBA is one of the most popular games globally and its popularity translated well into the EWC, largely due to the event being a part of MLBB’s competitive calendar.
The Mid Season Cup 2024 — which was recently rebranded from the Southeast Asia Cup — attracted a peak of 2.38m viewers and an average of 406,000 viewers. This makes it the most popular MLBB tournament of the year, ahead of the 13th season of the MPL Indonesia, the game’s most popular league.
The game’s second tournament, the Women’s Invitational 2024, was also a success. The event had more than 265,000 peak viewers, making it more popular in terms of viewership than many other EWC events, including Call of Duty, Overwatch, Fortnite and other titles. The Women’s Invitational is also the fourth-highest-viewed female esports event of all time.