The most watched esports events of January 2020

Esports Insider collaborates with esports analytical firm Esports Charts to take a look at event viewership on a month-by-month basis.

There isn’t a standard viewership metric that’s utilised and agreed upon by all parties in the industry at this point in time so it’s not always possible to compare events with a fair approach. Peak viewership isn’t the best way to see just how many people watched throughout an event, but comparing average audience numbers also has its problems considering some events can last a day and others a month.

With that in mind, we’ll be utilising peak viewership to observe the maximum audience that esports events are attracting. Here are the results for esports events in January 2020!

Most popular tournaments of the month

Free Fire event Copa América is the highest performer of the entirety of January 2020, achieving a peak viewership almost double of that in the second place with a mighty figure of 896,905. This isn’t to say that its viewership retention or average viewership was the best – it simply means that it had the most eyeballs on it at a single moment. 12 teams were in attendance, battling it out for their share of $35,000 (£26,992). Not bad for a mobile game with a relatively small prize pool!

Dota 2’s DreamLeague Season 13: The Leipzig Major is up next with 475,236 peak viewership, a solid number no less. With the Dota Pro Circuit full of Minor and Major events, there’s plenty for Dota 2 fans to watch every month – this, somewhat, makes it hard to stand out from the crowd and promote your tournament as much as you’d like. With that in mind, and the fact that a lot of titles kick-started their 2020 season in January, this is a good showing.

Riot Games occupies the third and fourth spots with LCS and LEC, putting up respectable figures of 387,299 and 310,473 respectively. Despite G2 Esports’ incredible showing throughout the entirety of 2019 – and the bevvy of partnerships that the LEC has established – North America proved to be the more popular of the two regions when it comes to peak viewership. Who’d have predicted that? Either way, having two entries in the top five will likely be a cause for celebration for Riot Games.

Rounding out the top five events is somewhat of an anomaly, speedrunning event Awesome Games Done Quick. A series of marathons for charity, the occasion had a stand-out year in 2020 and capitalised on the fact it was taking place during the quieter part of the month. Its peak viewership amounted to 263,077, a figure not to be sniffed at.

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