Top 5 Esports CIS Organizations in 2021

Esports Charts continues the 2021 overview results. In the new article, we will look at which CIS organizations became the most popular in past year and how the top has changed compared to 2020.

Data from Chinese streaming services is excluded from the statistics (due to the peculiarities of their viewership activity calculation methods), as well as data of Battle Royale games.

#5 — Team Empire

Team Empire is the new organization on our top, which collected 12.4M Hours Watched in 2021. Interestingly, Team Empire is only represented in two top disciplines — Dota 2 and Rainbow Six Siege. In the last reason, Team Empire was on the air the least (386 hours) and played the fewest matches compared to other teams (172 matches) in the ranking.

In 2021, Team Empire's Dota 2 roster participated in only one tier-1 event — ESL One Fall 2021, where they took the 7-8th spot. The team also played in the second division of the DPC EEU 2021 and qualified for the upper division for the new season, however, following the results of the Tour 1, they were relegated to the second division again.

In Rainbow Six, the club's team took the second spot at Six Mexico Major 2021 and the 9-12th spot at Six Sweden Major 2021. The team also placed second at European League 2021 Finals and won Russian Major League Season 6.

#4 — Virtus.pro

Compared to 2020, Virtus.pro dropped by two spots, but the team's Hours Watched still increased by 39%. The Dota 2 team reached the 5th-6th spot at The International 10, which brought the team the largest share of Hours Watched.

The CS:GO roster showed convincing results: the team reached the finals of IEM Katowice 2021, and also played in the playoffs of PGL Major Stockholm 2021. Yet, the organization went down in the ranking, as the last-year achievements of its rivals were more significant.

#3 — Team Spirit

The third spot is occupied by Team Spirit ever since 2020. At the same time, the team's Hours Watched increased four times.

The organization has rosters in only three disciplines – Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Hearthstone. Of course, the Dota 2 roster made the greatest contribution to the popularity and performance of the organization, thanks to the victory at The International 10.

The club's CS:GO roster won several tier-2 tournaments in 2021, including DreamHack Open January 2021 Europe, but at the main tournament of the year, the major, the team did not reach the playoff stage.

#2 — Gambit Esports

In 2021, Gambit Esports climbed two spots in the ranking. The organization increased its Hours Watched by a whopping five times. It was caused by the achievements of the CS:GO and Valorant teams. In addition, Gambit Esports may well be called the most popular organization in Russia, since Natus Vincere is from Ukraine.

The roster dedicated to Valve's shooter dominated the scene in the first half of 2021, winning multiple tier-1 events including IEM Katowice 2021 and BLAST Premier Spring 2021 Finals. In addition, the team reached the PGL Stockholm Major 2021 semifinals and the final of BLAST Premier Global Final.

The organization is represented in five more disciplines, the highlight of which is the Valorant team. It took the first place at the VCT 2021: Stage 3 Masters Berlin and also reached the final of the world championship (Valorant Champions 2021).

#1 — Natus Vincere

The most popular team in the CIS is once again Natus Vincere. This time, their Hours Watched increased by another 21%, reaching 104M.

The year has become even more successful for the CS:GO roster of NAVI than the last one. The roster took the first spots at such world events as Intel Extreme Masters XVI - Cologne, ESL Pro League Season 14, BLAST Premier: World Final 2021, and, of course, PGL Major Stockholm 2021. At the last tournament, the final with NAVI set the discipline’s new viewership record: 2.7M viewers.

In addition to the CS:GO roster, the Born to Win has nine more teams in other disciplines (excluding Battle Royales) which also contributed to the overall result of the organization. For example, NAVI took the second place at the Brawl Stars World Championship, and the club's ML:BB team took the 7-8th spot at the M3 World Championship, which gathered a huge audience.

The success of the club's teams in various disciplines has led them not only to the first spot in the CIS ranking but also to the second spot in the top of the most popular organizations in 2021 worldwide.

***

There are several factors behind such huge popularity of Natus Vincere: the already established fame on the esports scene, as well as the organization keeping up with the latest trends and establishing rosters in other disciplines. In particular, the organization signed rosters in Halo, as well as in some mobile battle royale disciplines that were not taken into account in our ranking.

Thanks to its rather successful results in a large number of disciplines, the team became even more recognizable. CS:GO and Dota 2 were responsible for the biggest share of the clubs’ Hours Watched. Meanwhile, CIS clubs tend to mostly ignore new popular mobile games. People in Asian countries are actively playing and spectating such mobile disciplines as ML:BB, Arena of Valor, PUBG Mobile, and Free Fire, while the American scene got into Valorant and Apex Legends. Perhaps this shall push the CIS market in a new direction in 2022?