Most Watched Esports Tournaments of 2021

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2021 is the year of viewership records in esports: the return of The International Dota 2 and CS:GO majors, the first Free Fire LAN since the start of the global pandemic, and much more! Esports Charts continues summing up the year, this time we will tell you about the events that attracted the most viewers in the passing year.

Disclaimer: The rankings are based on the Peak Viewers number and the total number of hours the audience spent watching matches of the event. The statistics do not take into account data from Chinese streaming services, since they use other methods of measuring viewership activity.

Top 10 most watched esports events in 2021

League of Legends Worlds 2021 was the most watched esports event of 2021 - it had more than 174.8 million Hours Watched. It is not only the highest total for this year, but the highest of all time! The previous record belonged to Worlds 2020, and the new Worlds accumulated almost 25% more Hours Watched. In addition to the traditionally great excitement around the event, the statistics were also affected by the return of T1 and Faker, who didn't qualify for Worlds 2020.

Worlds' main rival took second place — The International 10. Fans of the discipline were looking forward to TI, as last year it wasn't held at all. This fact explains the high numbers: the championship collected 107.2 million Hours Watched, which is a new record of the discipline. The last record belonged to TI9 and new number is 21% higher.

While the two most popular esports events were tournaments, the top 3 was rounded out by league — MPL Indonesia. The league's 8th season accumulated 76.9 million Hours Watched in 172 hours on air, the current record within the discipline. It should be noted that there are also two other ML:BB tournaments in the top 10: the recently ended M3 World Championship (6th place) and MPL Indonesia Season 7 (9th place). Top Mobile Legends tournaments are especially popular in Southeast Asia, namely in Indonesia and the Philippines.

The LCK Spring 2021 and Summer splits were the longest running events of the top 10 tournaments in the rankings. They were on air for 290 and 295 hours, respectively, and ranked fifth (67.5 million Hours Watched) and eighth (60.5 million Hours Watched). South Korea is rightfully considered one of the key esports regions for League of Legends, and matches of local teams are watched not only by Koreans themselves, but also by many fans of the LoL competition from other regions.

It is noteworthy that eight out of ten tournaments in the ranking belong to the MOBA genre. Only two shooter genre's tournaments made it to the top 10 — PGL Major Stockholm 2021 (CS:GO) with 71.2 million Hours Watched ranked fourth, while Valorant Champions 2021 ranked tenth with 46 million Hours Watched. Both events set new records in their disciplines, and the PGL Major did it for the first time since 2018: before that, the most watched CS:GO championship was FACEIT Major London (61 million Hours Watched).

Top 10 most viewed esports tournaments in 2021

The ranking is different when we look at the top esports tournaments in 2021 by Peak Viewers. According to this metric, the most popular event of 2021 was Free Fire World Series 2021 Singapore, the first global LAN in mobile battle royale for the last few years. The event had 5.4 million Peak Viewers, which is the current record for the entire esports scene (not taking into account the statistics from Chinese platforms).

There is no coincidence to FFWS 2021's success: the game is incredibly popular in several populous countries, including India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Unfortunately, it wasn't possible to sustain the success of the series, as the Free Fire World Series 2021 November was canceled due to coronavirus-related problems.

The Worlds 2021 final between EDward Gaming and DWG KIA was watched by over 4 million Peak Viewers. This is also a new discipline record and the highest total among desktop disciplines. 

PUBG Mobile Global Championship Season 0 was in third place (its statistics were heavily affected by the distribution of in-game gifts for watching streams in the game client). It gathered 3.8 million Peak Viewers on the first day of the finals.

Interestingly, only four PC tournaments were in the top 10 by Peak Viewers, while the other six were representatives of mobile esports. Regarding the number of events, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang topped the ranking — it had 4 tournaments.

Top 10 was closed by the second most important international tournament in the League of Legends esports season  — Mid-Season Invitational 2021. Its final between Royal Never Give Up vs DWG KIA was watched by over 1.8 million people concurrently.

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As we have already mentioned, in 2021 many esports disciplines have renewed their viewership records. This was largely due to the easing of the coronavirus situation: countries are slowly opening their borders to foreigners, allowing to hold big events: the return of TI (albeit without spectators) and the CS:GO majors is evidence to that. We can only hope that the trend will continue in 2022!

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