ESL Challenger Katowice 2023's Peak Viewers number is 137% higher compared to DreamHack Melbourne 2023

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ESL Challenger Katowice 2023 (CS:GO) ended on June 11 in Poland, where participants competed for $100K and a quota for ESL Pro League S18. The event became the third most popular event in the series by Peak Viewers, and did so mainly thanks to Gaules' broadcasts. 

A total of eight teams competed in ESL Challenger Katowice 2023: four teams received invitations based on ESL rankings, while another four participants were determined via regional qualifications. In the Grand Final, Virtus.pro defeated ENCE with the score of 2:1.

ESL Challenger Katowice 2023 Viewership Statistics

  ESL Challenger Katowice 2023 Matches Popularity   

ESL Challenger Katowice 2023 broadcasts accumulated 770.5K Hours Watched, and the Average Viewers number per broadcast was 25.8K. The Peak Viewers number was reached during the match between Forze and 9z, played on the first day of the tournament: 98.2K people watched the match concurrently. The Grand Final between ENCE and Virtus.pro ranked only third by popularity, garnering only 55% of the leader's results.

Four representatives from Europe and one team from Latin America are among the Top 5 most popular teams in the tournament in terms of Average Viewers per match. Interestingly, the difference between the Top 3 is only a few hundred viewers, and the difference between the first and fifth place was over 10,000 concurrent viewers.

Portuguese has become the most popular language for the ESL Challenger Katowice 2023 broadcasts, with more Peak Viewers than English and Spanish combined. Interestingly, Russian did not make it into the Top 3 languages, despite a local team playing in the tournament finals. 

Comparison with Other ESL Challenger Tournaments

The ESL Challenger series was launched in 2022 as the successor to the DreamHack Open. It is usually used as a transitional tier-2 tournament where quotas for major international championships are contested. In the past, the ESL Challenger has been held in Valencia, Rotterdam, and Melbourne.

Most popular ESL Challenger tournaments by Peak Viewers

The ESL Challenger Katowice 2023 exceeds ESL Challenger at DreamHack Melbourne 2023, which took place in April, by all viewership metrics. Compared to the tournament in Australia, the AV number grew by 75%, while the PV number grew by 137%. This difference is primarily attributed to the absence of Brazilian teams and their active fanbase. Consequently, there was no broadcast by Gaules, one of the most popular casters in the discipline.

The ESL Challenger Katowice 2023 ranks as the third tournament in the series in terms of Peak Viewers and the fifth in terms of Average Viewers per match. The leader by both metrics is the ESL Challenger #48, the first tournament in the series that took place online in February 2022. Back then, the AV number was 62.4K, and the PV number reached 149.3K.

It is worth noting that two more tournaments are scheduled for the series until the end of 2023 — the ESL Challenger at DreamHack Winter 2023 and ESL Challenger at DreamHack Atlanta 2023. They will take place in November and December, respectively, with a prize pool of $100K each as well as slots for the ESL Pro League S19.