Viewership Statistics

Whilst every major tournament did not garner more viewership than the last (in terms of watch time), the overall trajectory has most certainly been on the rise.

The ill performance of some tournaments compared to their formers cannot be attributed solely to the popularity of the esport itself, however, as many other factors come into play when determining how long people watch for.

Factors such as the production quality, frequency of technical errors, the hosts, the location of the event, the time of day/night when event is streamed world-wide, how well the event was marketed, and whether the teams that go far into the tournament are popular among viewers, are all components that can shift these statistics.

For example, the MLG Columbus 2016 Major had the highest number of unique views I could find across all Counter-Strike majors.

However, the ELEAGUE Boston 2018 Major had more than double the watch time that Columbus 2016 had. Thus, it can be seen that many more people were checking out the Major in 2016 and then promptly closing the stream, but the Major in 2018 had many more fans watching for longer periods of time.

Back in 2016, CS:GO went sort of mainstream for a while, as can be seen by the steep peak of unique viewers in 2016 in the above graph, with many people playing with their friends for fun, but not taking the competitive aspect of the game super seriously. Now, in 2018, it seems that while there are less overall people interested in Counter-Strike, there are FAR more serious players interested in Counter-Strike.

But does this mean that the overall interest in CS:GO as an esport is declining? Nope, not at all. In fact, it’s on the rise.

As seen above, the overall watch time average from each year has increased from the last, with the gap between 2016 and 2017 having the largest increase in audience watch duration (+30,150,149 hours).

Even though the overall number of people watching has peaked, the total number of hours spent by players watching tournaments is continuing to rise. An esport, or even a sport for that matter, aren’t judged by how many people are watching, but how much it’s being watched. While more unique viewers help accumulate a higher watch time, the only thing that really matters is the watch time itself.