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. 

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.

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).

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.  

The mobile version of battle royale game PUBG: Battlegrounds is a very popular mobile game globally, especially in Asia and other emerging markets. The PUBG MOBILE EWC tournament was also a popular event on a global scale, becoming the most-watched PUBG MOBILE tournament of the year.

The event attracted just over 566,000 peak viewers and 206,000 average viewers during nine days of competition. Nevertheless, despite its popularity among PUBG Mobile events this year — including the PUBG Mobile Global Open 2024 (513,600) — the event is 11th in the title’s all-time viewership.

Another mobile game that has found success in Asia, the Honor of Kings tournament at Esports World Cup is also currently the game’s most popular event in 2024, excluding Chinese viewership. Attracting 481,000 peak viewers and 92,000 average viewers, the event is notable for lasting just five days. The short air time of just under 27 hours is also impressive, especially because the second-most watched event of the year — the Honor of Kings Invitational 2024 Season 2 — had 10 more hours of air time and 241,000 peak viewers.

Continuing with the mobile theme, Free Fire, once known for having the world’s most popular esports event, also had the EWC as its most popular event of 2024. The EWC event attracted 471,000 peak viewers and just over 206,000 average viewers with just over 18 hours of air time. 

Despite the event recording 147 hours of air time and almost 27m hours watched, Riyadh Masters attracted just under 419,000 peak viewers and 178,000 average viewers. Compared to last year’s edition, which took place at the Gamers8 festival, the event had around 150,000 less peak viewers but around 20,000 more average viewers. The Riyadh Masters had fewer viewers than the PGL Wallachia Season 1, the most-watched Dota 2 event of the year, which has attracted around 487,000 peak viewers. 

It should be noted that The International, Dota 2’s most popular event, will take place later this year.

The popular battle royale game Apex Legends saw decent viewership for its EWC tournament, but not the best of the year. Its 219,000 peak viewership and 98,000 average viewership made the EWC event the second most popular event of the year, with just the ALGS Split 1 Playoffs being more popular with 567,000 peak viewers.

The most-watched fighting game tournament at the Esports World Cup was Street Fighter, one of the most popular games in the genre’s history. The event had just under 155,000 peak viewers and an average of 93,000 viewers.

However, this doesn’t put it in the top five Street Fighter events of 2024 in terms of viewership. For comparison, the most-watched Street Fighter event of the year was the EVO tournament in July, which attracted over 403,000 peak viewers.

Two immensely popular games in the United States and Europe, both Call of Duty and its battle royale mode Warzone did not break more than 150,000 viewers at the EWC. 

The regular Call of Duty event was a bit more successful than Warzone, with 140,000 peak viewers compared to Warzone’s 135,000 (86,000 average viewers compared to Warzone’s 76,000). The two tournaments were also not the most popular event for either game. The Call of Duty League’s Major One, Two and Three, as well as the 2024 playoffs, were all more popular than the EWC event. 

The world’s most popular football simulation game, EA FC 24, was relatively popular at the EWC, but failed to pass some of the game’s notable events. The EWC tournament attracted 108,000 peak viewers and around 43,300 average viewers, which makes it the third most popular event for the game in 2024.

This means it was behind the FC Pro 24 World Championship (113,000 peak viewers) and the FC Pro 24 Open, the most-watched EA FC event of the year that had just under 320,000 peak viewers. 

It should be noted that EA Sports, the creators of the game, are now gearing up for the launch of the new version in September, which means that the EWC is one of the last tournaments in the 24 version of the game. 

The PC version of PUBG: Battlegrounds has performed much worse at the Esports World Cup than its mobile counterpart, PUBG MOBILE. The game saw 105,000 viewers at its peak and around 52,000 average viewers during the EWC. However, this is not a terrible result.

This makes the EWC event the third-most watched tournament for PUBG’s PC version in 2024, behind the PUBG Global Series Phases three and four. Phase 3 had 281,000 peak viewers, and Phase 4 saw 287,000 peak viewers. 

A game that is currently experiencing a rebirth of sorts after the Overwatch League was cancelled and the ESL FACEIT Group came to the rescue of the Overwatch scene, Overwatch 2 performed well in terms of viewership. Its tournament saw around 100,000 peak viewers and just 33,000 average viewers, making it the second-highest viewership since the game’s esports scene underwent somewhat of a rebirth this year.

The Overwatch Champions Series 2024 Major was the most-watched event for Overwatch 2 this year, with 125,000 peak viewers, only 25,000 more than EWC. 

The first major disappointment in terms of viewership is the Rocket League tournament at the Esports World Cup. Despite being a popular game in terms of viewership worldwide, the EWC Rocket League event attracted relatively low viewership during its three days of competition. The official peak viewer number is just under 100,000 making Rocket League the first game at the EWC that did not surpass the 100,000 mark.

Both 2024 RLCS Majors had more viewers than the EWC tournament in Rocket League, but interestingly the EU qualifiers for both Majors were also more popular than the EWC tournament. 

The RLCS Major 1 had 435,000 peak viewers, the Major 2 had 316,000, and the qualifiers ranged from 413,000 peak viewers to 121,700 — all better than EWC. 

Continuing with games that might have disappointed during EWC, Fortnite also did not break 100,000 viewers at its peak despite a large prize pool and notable players participating in the event. The Fortnite event had a peak of 72,600 viewers and an average viewer number of 25,500. This amount of viewers was not enough to put the EWC tournament in the game’s top 10 tournaments of the year.

For comparison, its most popular event — FNCS 2024 – Major 1: Europe — had 739,000 peak viewers and a lower prize pool. 

Despite not breaking 100,000 viewers, Esports World Cup’s Rainbow Six tournament was actually in line with some of the game’s events this year. Rainbow Six has only broken 100,000 peak viewers on just occasions in 2024. The EWC Rainbow Six: Siege event still did have a low peak, with just 67,800 viewers watching the grand finals, and an average viewer count of 25,000. 

The Six Invitational 2024 is the most-watched event of the year for Rainbow Six esports, seeing a peak of 521,000 viewers. The BLAST R6 Major Mahcnester was also more successful than the EWC, with 162,000 peak viewers. 

The oldest game in the EWC and a pioneering esports game series, StarCraft 2 is still a popular esports title despite being launched almost 15 years ago. The game attracted just under 61,000 peak viewers and 24,500 average viewers which makes it very close to Rainbow Six and Fortnite, two much more popular games today. The EWC performance was the second highest for StarCraft this year, with only IEM Katowice (77,200) surpassing it in terms of metrics.

With 60,500 peak viewers and 33,500 average viewers, Tekken 8 at the Esports World Cup performed much worse than Street Fighter, the other FGC game at the event. Still, the Tekken tournament saw decent numbers for a fighting game that does not have as robust of a scene as its competitor. Overall, the EWC tournament is seventh in terms of viewership for the game this year. 

Riot Games’s auto battler Teamfight Tactics is still a popular esports title despite the genre’s drop in popularity in recent years. 

Despite having two separate tournaments with prize pools amounting to more than £1m, new simulation racing game Rennsport saw just over 10,000 peak viewers at both events combined. The Driver Championship had 5,461 viewers at peak and 4,530 viewers on average, while the Team Championship saw 5,748 viewers at its peak but 3,866 on average. 

It has to be said that the game was also featured at Gamers8 last year, where it had around 13,600 peak viewers. Despite these low figures, the number is somewhat in line with ESL R1 2024 Spring (6,508), the game’s highest-viewed event this year.