Top Esports Games in 2021

In 2021, mobile gaming continued to gain popularity and take root in the esports industry. In turn, the PC disciplines weren’t falling behind and kept actively attracting new audiences. At the end of 2020, the top 5 most viewed esports games included two representatives of mobile platforms, but they were nowhere near the leading spots. Today Esports Charts will tell you of the changes to the viewership of esports disciplines in 2021.

Disclaimer: the ranking is based on the total Hours Watched of esports tournaments in 2021. Esports Charts analyzed more than 100 disciplines and excluded data from Chinese streaming services from the statistics due to the peculiarities of methods they use for calculating the viewer activity.

Place	Game	Hours Watched
#1	League of Legends	664.1M
#2	CS:GO	410.8M
#3	Mobile Legends: Bang Bang	387.2M
#4	Dota 2	347.6M
#5	PUBG Mobile	216.7M

#5 — PUBG Mobile

Opening the top 5 watched esports disciplines in 2021 is PUBG Mobile – one of the first mobile games that managed to become competitive. The project from Krafton and Tencent has dropped one spot in the rankings compared to 2020, despite increasing its Hours Watched to 216.1M (up 61%).

The increase in the PUBG Mobile viewer activity is mostly due to the huge number of regional tournaments. Such events consistently attract hundreds of thousands of viewers in many countries of Southeast Asia and Latin America.

More than a 1M Peak Viewers were gathered by PMPL 3 2021 Southeast Asia Finals and PUBG Mobile World Invitational 2021. Holding the discipline record for this indicator was PMGC Season 0, the final event of the 2020 competitive season, which took place in January 2021. The first round of the event attracted a total of 3.8M viewers. Broadcasts in the PUBG Mobile client, which featured the distribution of in-game gifts, were one of the reasons for such a massive influx of viewers.

#4 — Dota 2

Dota 2 is holding the fourth spot. In 2021, Valve’s MOBA stood out due to having a record prize pool of $40M+, which was played by the best teams worldwide at The International 10. The mark of 2.74M Peak Viewers (a new record for the discipline) was reached during the grand final of this particular tournament, where PSG.LGD fought Team Spirit.

Dota 2 increased its figures to 345.8M Hours Watched – up 27% compared to 2020. This is largely due to the world becoming less affected by the COVID-19 on the world, which was why Valve finally decided to hold the first The International in two years. The matches of TI10 generated 107.2M Hours Watched, which is almost a third of Dota 2's total Hours Watched for the year.

Other popular tournaments of the 2021 season were WePlay AniMajor and ONE Esports Singapore Major 2021, which gathered 645K and 598K Peak Viewers, respectively. However, it should be noted that despite the overall increase in viewer activity, it was the first time for Dota 2 to not enter the top 3 most viewed esports disciplines.

#3 — Mobile Legends: Bang Bang

The game that pushed Dota 2 out of the top 3 for the first time was Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, the most viewed mobile esports title of 2021. In total, ML:BB tournaments managed to generate 386.9M Hours Watched, improving this indicator by 2.5 times over the year.

Mobile MOBA from Moonton enjoys the greatest popularity Indonesia, as well as in Malaysia and the Philippines, with its tournaments regularly gathering hundreds of thousands and even millions of viewers. A mark of 3.2M Peak Viewers was reached during the playoff stage of the M3 World Championship. There were a total of seven tournaments in the discipline in 2021 that managed to gather more than 1M Peak Viewers.

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang has become a breakout star of 2021. The game managed to increase its audience by several times, which allowed it to stand on par with well-known titans of the esports industry. At the same time, ML:BB matches were on the air for only 5.15K hours – which is the lowest figure in the ranking.

#2 — Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

The second spot in the top once again went to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Despite the repeatedly voiced doubts over the shooter’s ability to stand up to the growing popularity of Valorant, the viewership for CS:GO only continues to grow. In 2021, viewers spent a little more than 410M hours at the tournaments in this discipline, which is 14% more than in 2020.

The last major LAN CS:GO tournament before the pandemic was IEM Katowice 2020, which also marked the start of the era of online events – which ended up lasting a whole year. In 2021, LAN hosted several championships at once, including PGL Major Stockholm 2021. It was in the grand final of the first major in two years that the mark of 2.75M Peak Viewers was reached. This result was a record for the discipline, exceeding the previous record set at ELEAGUE Major 2017 more than twice.

Other popular tournaments of the season include BLAST Premier Fall 2021 Finals, IEM Cologne 2021, ESL Pro League Season 14, which attracted about 800K Peak Viewers. NAVI team, which dominated the discipline throughout the year, won the champion’s title on each of the listed events, including the major. Matches with the participation of "Born to Win" constantly gathered a huge audience on the broadcasts, which was reflected in the final viewership figures of CS:GO.

#1 — League of Legends

League of Legends has been the most viewed esports title for years now. Following the general trend of esports audience growth, LoL tournament viewership indicators increased by almost 13% (up to 664M hours) compared to 2020.

The record mark of 4M Peak Viewers was reached on the broadcast of the League of Legends Worlds 2021 grand final. The championship also entered the top 2 esports events in history based on this indicator, losing only to the Free Fire World Series 2021 Singapore (5.4M Peak Viewers). Another international championship – Mid-Season Invitational 2021 - was held for the first time since the start of the pandemic and gathered 1.84M Peak Viewers.

Most of the LoL audience in 2021 was made up of viewers of the regional leagues in Europe and South Korea. As such, LCK 2021 Summer gathered 1.3M Peak Viewers, while LEC Summer 2021, LCK Spring 2021, and LEC Spring 2021 gathered a little over 800K Peak Viewers each.

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Valorant was the closest to getting into the top 5. The shooter was only a few million Hours Watched behind PUBG Mobile. Following it is Free Fire, which was holding the fifth spot in 2020. Arena of Valor, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Rocket League have collected less than 100M Hours Watched each.

At the end of 2021, a representative of mobile gaming became yet one spot closer to the title of the most viewed esports discipline worldwide. While not everyone can boast of having a powerful gaming PC nowadays, almost every student does have a good smartphone. Over the past few years, mobile gaming has become much more accessible, which is why its popularity is growing daily.