The group stage of the main Dota 2 tournament of 2019 came to an end. Today we will summarize this part of the TI9 and tell about its successes compared to the previous season.

We should remind you that the Chinese platforms did not participate in the comparison. At the same time, this country's audience has supplemented the results of the group stage – but only in terms of the results taken based on the trusted platforms' data.

In fact, we have a rather interesting state of affairs. The peak viewers mark of this year's championship was less than a thousand viewers short of overcoming that of the last year's event. Such an occurrence may be somewhat annoying, but otherwise there are a huge number of positive aspects.

First off, let's talk about the average viewers on the broadcast. It has increased by whopping 143 thousand viewers. In percentage terms, this growth is equal to 32%. Simply put, the World Cup got one-third of the new viewers during this season, which is a significant increase.

The stream on Valve's own platform has managed to show a perfect performance. Indeed, the Steam.tv broadcast has shown all kinds of advancements. The number of peak viewers has grown the most, its result getting a boost worth of 222 thousand viewers.

Speaking about the platform, the general contribution overview can be outlined. We will evaluate this contribution to the result by the hours watched. Based on this, the majority of viewers were spectating from Twitch. Amazon's service has generated 51% of the total number of views.

The aforementioned Steam with its 21% contribution became the second most popular. Closing the top three was YouTube Live, which has collected a little more than 10% of the total result of this season. The growth of these two participants is notable, as their share has increased compared to last season. For example, the respective indicator of Google's service in 2018 was equal to just 9%. Although small, the growth is still present.

It’s worth talking about the main stars of the tournament – the teams themselves. In terms of the average viewers of the group stage of The International 2019, Virtus.pro becomes the most popular participant of the event. The second spot went to the guys from Team Liquid, and the bronze went to TNC Predator.

If we talk about the broadcast's peak viewers, then Team Liquid and TNC Predator would be the most notable. Their clash has managed to gather 356 thousand viewers at once. To compare, the second spot (taken by Team Secret) features a result worth of 335 thousand viewers.

To conclude, we see a worthy result from the Dota 2 main event of the year. The World Championship is gaining a new audience – and for one of the top disciplines in the esports industry this is extremely important, especially when your main rival keeps you on your toes.