The top 10 most-viewed esports events of 2024

Following the conclusion of Mobile Legends Bang Bang’s M6 tournament, there are officially no large-scale esports events left in 2024.

Looking back, several major events caught the eyes of esports fans across the globe.  From regional leagues such as South Korea’s LCK to mammoth spectacles across the FPS, MOBA and mobile scenes, esports has flourished from a viewership perspective.

In this article, we have compiled a list of the top 10 most-viewed esports events of 2024, according to esports data and viewership platform Esports Charts. This list does not include Chinese viewership, as well as data from Facebook Gaming and battle royale games.

It should be noted that this is the last list before League of Legends and Counter-Strike undergo significant ecosystem changes. In the case of League of Legends, there is an entirely new international event to be played in 2025, which is sure to attract substantial viewership.

VCT Masters Madrid 2024, which took place early in the year, was the most popular VALORANT event of the season. Garnering more viewers than its season-ending World Championship, the Madrid event saw a peak of 1.68m viewers. This makes it the most popular VALORANT event in history.

For context, VCT Champions 2024 managed to attract 1.41m peak viewers, making it the fourth-most-watched event in the game’s history. The popularity of VCT Masters Madrid 2024 shows that VALORANT is steadily growing to be the world’s most-watched FPS game overall.

However, this is still the only VALORANT event on this list.

The final event of the 2024 LCK season, the Regional Finals, was held in September 2024 just before the League of Legends World Championship. The event, won by Dplus KIA, recorded an impressive 1.82m viewers.

The growth of South Korea’s franchised league cannot be understated in 2024 with this year’s Regional Finals dwarfing previous editions. The second-highest Regional Finals peak viewership was in 2020, which garnered just over 1m viewers.

Overall, the LCK was the most popular regional League of Legends competition in 2024, with its Summer split also recording an impressive 1.6m viewers, just barely missing the top 10 this year.

The only CS2 event on this list, the PGL Major was the first-ever Major to take place in CS2 following Counter-Strike’s shift to the new game in late 2023. The Major was won by Ukrainian team NAVI and was the fourth-most watched Counter-Strike event in history. The event is behind two other PGL-organised Major competitions — Antwerp 2022 (2.1m peak viewers) and Stockholm 2021 (2.74m peak viewers).

PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 garnered a peak of 1.85m viewers, making it more popular than the likes of the 2023 Blast.tv Paris Major and 2022 IEM Rio Major. Still, it is far off the all-time CS:GO peak recorded in Stockholm in 2021.

The second Major of the season, the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 in mid-December, recorded lower viewership (1.3m peak viewers). This could be attributed to time zone differences, the lack of NAVI — one of the world’s most popular teams — in the finals and Chinese viewership not being recorded by Esports Charts.

By now, esports fans should know to keep an eye out for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. The mobile MOBA is not only growing, but it has one of the strongest viewerships of any esports game, only outdone by League of Legends. 

The first of several entries on this list, the franchised Indonesian league has recorded an impressive amount of views in its 13th season and is the first event on this list to break two million viewers at its peak. With 2.25m viewers watching Fnatic ONIC vs EVOS Glory, it’s perhaps surprising to note that this is only the fifth most popular MPL Indonesia season.  

The main event for MLBB at the Esports World Cup 2024 was the Mid Season Cup. Similar to other titles that featured during the EWC, the tournament saw the best teams from multiple regions compete against each other in Riyadh for a sizable prize pool.  

With 2.38m peak viewers, the Mid Season Cup was an overall success and provided a major boost to the overall viewership of the EWC. Still, despite its $3m (£2.36m) prize pool, it was the lowest-viewed edition of the tournament since 2021. 

Going back to South Korea, LCK Spring 2024 was much more popular than Summer this year, garnering a peak of 2.65m viewers. 

Interestingly, this was another event where the eventual League of Legends world champions, T1, were defeated in the grand final. However, the team’s appearance alone provided a massive boost to the tournament’s viewership.

Looking back, T1 had more than 12m more hours watched than the split’s eventual winner Gen.G, which goes to show just how popular the team is in South Korea.

League of Legends continued to break records this year, with its well-known mid-season tournament, MSI, peaking at 2.82m viewers. This makes it the most popular edition of MSI in history and the seventh-most watched League of Legends event ever. Taking place in Chengdu, China, the competition was won by a returning name, Gen.G.

The first six most viewed League of Legends events are, of course, six editions of the World Championship. An interesting piece of information to round up this entry: MSI 2024 was more popular than the 2017 and 2018 editions of Worlds. 

The second season of MPL Indonesia in 2024, Season 14, was much more popular than its predecessor earlier in the year. MPL Indonesia Season 14 saw a peak of 4m viewers, almost double the amount of Season 13. The new season also saw two different finalists with eventual winners Team Liquid ID defeating RRQ Hoshi.

The Indonesian league is the most popular mobile esports league of the year, with only the LCK comparable in terms of sheer numbers for a regional competition.

With just 120,000 viewers more than MPL Indonesia Season 14, generating 4.13m peak viewers, the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang’s World Championship, M6, takes the runners-up spot. Interestingly,  M6 recorded a lower peak number of viewers than last year’s event, which had more than 5m peak viewers. However, this year’s edition has shown large increases in average viewership. 

M6, and Mobile Legends in general, are proving that mobile games are showing no signs of slowing down, especially in Southeast Asia where the scene is at its strongest. 

The League of Legends World Championship is once again the most popular esports event of the year, and also the most popular event in esports history. 

Esports Charts started collecting data about viewership in 2017, and Worlds has been the most-viewed event every year except 2021 when the Free Fire World Series took its place at the top. With a peak of 6.91m viewers, the biggest tournament in all of esports has once again proven that no other event can come close to it in terms of numbers. 

The tournament had around 500,000 more viewers than the 2023 edition and has once again raised the bar for esports events.