March was quite an unusual month considering the impact of the ongoing pandemic – which has dramatically increased the numbers of broadcast viewers. In turn, this allowed the tournaments to break new records. We will tell you about the changes to the viewability of competitions in the results of March.

IEM Katowice became the most popular tournament of the month. The final match of NAVI versus G2 Esports has gathered a total of one million peak viewers. As of today, it is a record for all the tournaments aside of the Major cycle. We have already mentioned the reasons for this in a separate news article.

The top has included the mobile games as well. MPL ID Season 5 has reached the second spot of the overall ranking with a total of 662 thousand viewers. The Indonesian professional Mobile Legends league was already making repeated appearances in our top – however, this particular result is record-breaking for the discipline.

The Brazilian Free Fire League was another mobile gaming representative in the top, with one of the rounds of the regular stage gathering nearly 470 thousand peak viewers – which is not really a new and unexpected feat for this discipline, considering that each new season of the league tends to attract more viewers than the previous one. The state of the Brazilian Free Fire scene can only be described as booming.

There's a double presence of League of Legends. Being one of the most popular esports disciplines, it has managed to enter the top with not one but two of its leagues at once.

The third spot was taken by the regional Korean championship. The match of T1 versus Afreeca Freecs has gathered 591 thousand viewers. It should be noted that another match that was much anticipated (of T1 versus Gen.G) has taken place on April 1st, and yet still managed to update the result by reaching the mark of 637 thousand viewers. This can only mean that T1 continues to attract everyone's attention.

LEC Spring 2020 has gathered a bit smaller crowd. The battle between the region's two main teams (Fnatic and G2) has gathered 456 thousand viewers. While this result is not phenomenal by itself, it will surely reach the record-breaking levels once these teams meet in the playoffs.

The English-speaking viewers were attracted to an unusual competition. This time one of the most popular competitions of this particular community was the virtual F1 championship – which was watched by 395 thousand peak viewers. The COVID-19-related situation has also affected the VirtualGP series, allowing it to attract quite a large number of new viewers. Previously, the racing simulators were unable to gather this much audience – but the stellar roster combined with the lack of real-life racing became the key to setting a record for the discipline.

The championship for the Call of Duty's newly introduced game mode has managed to gather much audience as well. The competition between the cyberathletes and popular personalities has managed to attract nearly 300 thousand peak viewers – a result which is superior to the month's many large championships. We have scrutinized this topic in a separate news article.

The top spot was once again occupied by IEM Katowice. LEC Spring 2020 has managed to climb higher as well, reaching the middle of the English-language top. Meanwhile, LCK was nowhere to be found in the top 5, given that the interest taken by the Western fans of the esports LoL in the Korean battles tends to decrease with each passing season.

The North American regional tournament wasn't able to show its strong sides. In March, LCS has only managed to reach the mark of 280 thousand peak viewers. While this result is not much smaller than the one shown by the “Old World” counterpart, it is still making us question the potential of the event.

The Russian-speaking fans are as dedicated to the Valve games as ever. The region's top 5 most popular events in March has once again featured only CS:GO and Dota 2.

Most members of particular community were also watching the IEM Katowice, all because of the guys from Natus Vincere. Their winter sprint through the finals of several championships has made the fans of the discipline quite enthusiastic, allowing the Polish event to reach such an incredible result. We have already described their “path to one million” in our blog.

European ESL Pro League was yet another popular CS:GO tournament, and once again the peak viewers mark was reached during the match of NAVI. This shows us that yellow-blacks have a serious impact on the visibility of each championship they are participating in.

Following these are the three Dota 2 events. In March, the second season of Parimatch League has reached the highest spot among the three. The league's finale has attracted a total of 79 thousand peak viewers, enough for overtaking the recently concluded major. This is while the SL imbaTV Dota 2 Minor S3 has a large advantage in terms of the international roster of its participants and the presence of DPC points.

The guys from WePlay! Esports have also entered the top. In March, they held a charity championship featuring several regions. During one of the matches, the competition has reached a figure of 60 thousand peak viewers. We have analyzed the championship in more detail in one of our previous news articles.

There is an interesting point to be found when looking at the channels. While the presence of official channels of IEM Katowice and LEC in the top is a given, the other two channels are quite surprising. In case of the /rocketleague the reason is found in the match between the esports division of FC Barcelona and Renault Vitality. In turn, /ibai has managed to achieve the majority of its views due to streaming a charity FIFA championship featuring a number of popular players of the main Spanish football league.