Valve’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive might not have the power of League of Legends as an esport, or Fortnite as a cultural phenomenon, but the team-based first-person shooter remains one of the strongest titles on Twitch in terms of viewership.

Because of the game’s age, esports account for a large portion of the title’s viewership on Twitch, much in the way esports do for LoL and Dota 2 , and thanks to some help from popular esports organization Cloud9 becoming the first North American team to ever win a Major, the esport saw viewership growth.

The title’s most-watched event of the year on YouTube and Twitch, according to research by Newzoo, was the ELEAGUE Major: Boston, which saw C9 capture a title, pulling 54.1M hours watched. The event’s viewership was a 26.8% increase over last year’s ELEAGUE Major: Atlanta, which was also played in January, and on Twitch specifically, the game is set to outpace last year’s overall numbers.

Year-Over-Year

Despite about 10 days remaining in the year, CS:GO has already recorded more total hours watched (353.51M) than last year (353.18M). Though the game’s viewership goes through long stints of mediocre viewership, the title’s flourishing esports scene causes huge spikes in viewership during high-profile competitions.

It’s difficult to get a firm grasp of how many people are truly watching CS:GO from year to year because rights for broadcasting the game’s esports have grown. Twitch by no means has a monopoly on the title’s esports broadcasts. Organizers like ELEAGUE often air competitions on TBS, and ESL and DreamHack have signed a deal to broadcast matches on Denmark-based TV2. As broadcasts become more fragmented across different platforms for CS:GO, it may become increasingly difficult to gauge the true growth of the game’s viewership.

Esports Effect

CS:GO is an esport through and through. As competitions come, so does the viewership. However, when there aren’t high-profile competitions going on, the game sees a sharp decline in hours watched on Twitch.

This year history was made by C9 as they became the first ever American team to win a Major, and viewership for that event reflected the scope of the accomplishment. The most-watched day for CS:GO in terms of total hours watched was Jan. 27—the weekend of ELEAGUE Major: Boston’s finals. The highest concurrent viewership for any channel over the course of the year was ELEAGUE with 1.09M on Jan. 28—the day C9 cemented its tournament victory.

The historic nature of C9’s Major win was certainly helpful in boosting CS:GO’s total viewership for the year, but it’d be ignorant to turn a blind eye to the overall strength of the vast array of third-party tournaments that are held throughout the year for the title. Seven of the top 10 most-watched CS:GO channels are esports organizers, and all of the top five streams are for esports.

Thanks to January’s Major, ELEAGUE sits as the most-watched channel when broadcasting CS:GO content with 41.63M hours watched, but FACEIT and StarLadder are no pushovers themselves with 33.82M and 31.24M hours watched this year, respectively. All of the top 10 streaming sessions in terms of average CCV were by either ELEAGUE or FACEIT.

Influencer Impact

The biggest weakness for CS:GO viewership on Twitch is clearly its lack of consistent personality streamers. While high-profile personalities like Jaryd “Summit1g” Lazar and Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek occasionally provide the game with some viewership, neither play enough to give the title a noteworthy boost. Lazar ranks ninth in terms of CS:GO hours watched for a channel, but he only provided the game 293 hours of airtime. For comparison, he played both Fortnite and Call of Duty more with 408 and 319 hours of airtime, respectively.

Grzesiek has taken a similar approach to broadcasting a variety of games, and is only 15th on the list of top CS:GO channels. The game is the sixth most-watched title on his channel this year, and he aired it for just over 93 hours. While his streams of the game drew an average of 33.6K CCV, the inconsistency of streaming the game didn’t provide much for the title overall in terms of hours watched.

One potential re-entrance to CS:GO for streaming personalities came earlier this month with the release of a battle royale game mode. With the surging popularity of games like Fortnite and PlayersUnknown’s Battlegrounds , the importance of having a streamer-friendly gaming experience has been brought to the forefront. CS:GO didn’t experience a huge jump once the new game mode came out, but it did attract the attention of Grzesiek for at least a short period of time.

While it’s doubtful that CS:GO will ever have the personality streaming presence of a game like Fortnite, it doesn’t need to. A quick look at the game’s viewership numbers make it clear that esports and competition are where the opportunity lies for the title. The esports calendar is filled with tournaments for CS:GO that attract sponsorship and partners from all over the world. With more hours watched on Twitch this year, despite a growing fragmentation of broadcasting rights, CS:GO’s esports continue to make the game one of Twitch’s top sources of content.

By The Numbers