The recent trends for CS:GO show that it becomes more popular in the CIS, which was also confirmed by the recent IEM Katowice. Today we will tell you how this came to be.

The beginning of the last decade was marked by the finale of the Intel Extreme Masters Season 4, taking place in Germany. Natus Vincere, the promising Ukrainian players, were victorious. Ten years later the same scenario has repeated itself, but now their victory was spectated by a million viewers.

There is a reason we have chosen to emphasize this particular team. It is one of the most popular ones not only within its region but also worldwide, which has caused its tag to repeatedly generate new records. This rule of thumb has also worked at the last finale of Intel Extreme Masters in Poland, where the majority of viewers were attracted by Na'Vi.

All of this has caused this CS:GO championship to become the most popular competition of this kind outside of Major series. Moreso, with its incredible Russian-language broadcast peak viewers indicator, it has managed to become ranked higher than all the game's World Championships, StarLadder Major Berlin included. But the early signs pointing to the upcoming record have started to occur long before that.

The situation has started to gain its momentum at the London-based ICE Challenge 2020 where the Russian-language broadcast has gathered 136 thousand peak viewers (whereas, as an example, English-language stream has only hit the mark of 75 thousand peak viewers). This can be attributed to the same “born to win” who have faced mousesports in the finals.

Next, BLAST Premier Spring was the next location for the Russian-language broadcast to shine, with almost 150 thousand peak viewers being attracted by the match between Na'Vi and Vitality. With this, the championship became the most popular event for the Russian-speaking viewers outside of the Major series. But having such a high status was a short-lived occurrence this time as well.

The group stage of the next large championship, IEM Katowice, has already updated the broadcast record to 273 thousand peak viewers. Apparently it was still not enough yet, as the indicator kept on improving literally every single day. This streak of records has ended during the final match of Natus Vincere versus G2 Esports, with the peak viewers mark exceeding 382 thousand.

The industry as a whole shows an interesting situation so far, as we are dealing with the fourth best peak viewers result across the entire CIS-based esports. This result was only exceeded by such Dota 2 competitions as The International 2018, The International 2019, as well as The Kiev Major.

The results of Dota 2 and CS:GO directly hint at the overall popularity of competitions in Valve's games being tied to the successes of the CIS-based participants. In cases when the well-known teams from this particular region (such as Na'Vi or VP) drop out early enough, the total viewer count fails to reach any significant results. From the other side, events such as IEM Katowice shows that big, even record-breaking figures are possible if such a team reaches finals.

The record itself should be attributed not to the organizations alone, but also to the studios responsible for covering the event. In particular, Maincast stands out by having two Russian-language broadcast records displayed at a single channel, as well as outside of Valve's tournaments: The Kuala Lumpur Major's238 thousand peak viewers and the recent IEM Katowice with its 382 thousand peak viewers.

This naturally stems from all the important work done, with the studio hiring the best regional representatives for the coverage – as well as readily experimenting and inviting promising commentators and analysts who come from other disciplines. Additionally, the studio does not show any constant problems with its broadcasting, providing it with a high level of quality.

Over the course of the last few months, the online presence of players within the game itself has also grown: the graph which reflects the player numbers is on the constant rise. This means that the game either constantly gains new players or attracts the old ones that display newfound interest towards the shooter's esports life in addition to their usual gaming activities.

Of course, this will not be the end – as we are hoping to see even bigger achievements in the future. Want to be the first to learn about them? Then be sure to subscribe to our pages on VK, Twitter and Facebook. Do not forget to share your opinion on our official Discord server.