Phase 1 fostered viewership growth at the BLAST R6 Major Manchester 2024 thanks to new event format

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The BLAST R6 Major Manchester 2024 is the first Major event for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege esports since the record-breaking Six Invitational 2024. Only three months after the esports title set a new peak viewership record, the Manchester Major kicked off on the 16th of May with its Phase 1. The event in England features a revised tournament format, which has helped the event to concentrate its viewership through this early stage. 

Previously, R6 Majors brought 16 teams to the Play-In stage, who would compete for top 8 to advance to Playoffs; 8 other teams were also directly invited to the Playoffs stage, which completed the 16-team playoffs stage of the tournaments. The Major Manchester 2024 has flipped this formula around, choosing to instead invite 12 teams directly to Phase 2, and have 8 lower-seeded rosters compete through Phase 1 for the 4 spots in the second stage. The tournament has retained its 16-team playoffs structure, which was introduced in 2023, but altered it to optimise the flow of the event. 

Phase 1 now consists entirely of Bo3 matches, giving teams a chance to create even more exciting action for fans to enjoy. However, for time management reasons, the Phase 1 stage consistently hosted matches simultaneously. Simultaneous matches have become the norm in R6 events, and many superfans would prefer to be able to watch every match live, without having to switch between broadcasts. This may be, but the event overall benefits from an increased average viewership, thanks to the combined fanbase of four different teams across two matches tuning in at the same time. 

BLAST R6 Major Manchester 2024 Phase 1 Viewership Statistics

The first BLAST R6 Major of the year garnered 851.6K Hours Watched for its new Phase 1. The new replacement for the Play-In stage through 2023 brought in hundreds of thousands of watch time for the esports discipline, and the Upper Bracket Quarterfinal quickly set the peak viewership record for the stage.

Hosted on May 16, the first day of the two-day phase, Team Liquid’s match against G2 Esports reached 80K Peak Viewers. The match came down to the very last round, with Team Liquid claiming a 8-7 victory on the third map of their best-of-three. The game was by far the closest match of the stage, and fans excitedly tuned in as it came to a close. 

The compact Phase 1 also brought a high average viewership to the event. It received 51.4K Average Viewers, which is more than the entire BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023 event. The new Bo3 format has been a wild success for the viewership of the Major, and this may be something BLAST experiments more with in the future. 

For a more direct look at how the new event format has changed viewership for the title, we directly compared the Phase 1 viewership with the Play-In viewership statistics of the previous Major, the BLAST R6 Major Atlanta 2023. The new format has drastically affected the average viewership of the tournament, but other metrics were impacted too. 

  Comparison of the Manchester 2024 Phase 1 viewership with the Atlanta 2023 Play-in   

The new event format for the Major not only significantly affected Average Viewers, but Peak Viewers as well. The close third map brawl which became the stage’s most popular match would not have been possible in the previous Play-In system. The 2023 system employed Bo3 matches for elimination games, but not for opening matches, such as Team Liquid against G2 Esports in 2024.

With only half the teams of the Atlanta 2023 Play-In, the 2024 Phase 1 stage hosted only 10 matches, half that of what we saw in 2023. This naturally had an effect on the airtime and overall watch time of the stage, which both fell slightly. Although the 2024 event has garnered fewer Hours Watched, sponsors are rewarded with a larger concurrent audience to potentially reach. 

Despite these changes, the core audience of R6 esports remains the same. The esports discipline is still dominated by Twitch-based streams, which generate a vast majority of the viewership for these events. English has remained the most popular language, followed by Portuguese, including Brazilian-Portuguese. Apart from English, Portuguese viewership sits comfortably ahead of other languages for the 2024 Major. 

Before coming to a close, let’s take a sneak peak of Phase 2 of the event, which began yesterday, on May 19. Phase 2 has also leaned slightly towards Bo3 matches more this year; in 2023, the playoffs employed Bo3 for elimination matches, but 2024 has seen this expand to include qualification matches too. Throughout the entire event, BLAST is leaning more towards Bo3 for their R6 events. 

Phase 2 accumulated 710.8K Hours Watched for its first day of matches, already close behind the entire two-day Phase 1 event. Both Peak Viewers and Average Viewers have risen for the event, highlighting that the high viewership for Phase 1 was no fluke. 

Viewership for the remaining stages of the Manchester Major appear to be on the rise. Esports Charts will be continuously updating the tournament page for the event with new viewership statistics, as each match of the event finishes. Users with a PRO subscription can also immediately access advanced statistics, such as the most popular teams, matches, and languages of the event. Visit our Pricing page for more information.