IEM Rio 2024 records viewership increase

Counter-Strike 2 event IEM Rio 2024 saw an increase in viewership compared to last year’s edition.

The Brazil-based event, only the second of its nature (not including the 2022 Major), recorded a peak viewership of 709,317 around 150,000 more than in 2023, according to esports data platform Esports Charts. Overall, IEM Rio 2023 is the eighth most-watched event of the year.

This year’s average viewership was just under 40,000 higher than that of last year’s, averaging 289,111 over the 49 hours and 50 minutes of watch time. It is worth noting that IEM Rio 2024 and IEM Rio 2023 took place at different times of year, with the 2023 edition occurring in April.

The event was won by Ukrainian esports organisation Natus Vincere (NAVI) after taking down German esports organisation MOUZ in the best-of-five Grand Final. The two finalists were the most watched teams throughout the event, in terms of hours watched, with NAVI recording 5.8m hours watched and MOUZ 5.6m. This was head and shoulders above the rest, with hometown favourites FURIA being the third most watched team with 2.4m hours watched.

Despite the Brazilian roster not making the final, the Portuguese language streams’ peak viewership (245,503) only just fell short of the English broadcasts (294,124). The three other highest peaks came from Russian (177,548), Ukrainian (85,741) and Mongolian (37,335) language streams.

The Mongolian viewership is likely due to The MongolZ finishing in the top eight of the event.

Once again Twitch continues to dominate in the broadcasting platform category, reaching a peak viewership of 460,206 compared to YouTube’s 268,271 and TikTok Live’s 111.