Free Fire World Series 2023 Knockouts Week 1 sees Brazilian viewership domination
The Free Fire World Series 2023 began on November 10 and saw the conclusion of the first three days of action in the Knockout Stage. With a new format and an extra team participating this time around, there was an upturn in the viewership numbers, although a comparison with the Free Fire World Series 2022 Bangkok would only make sense come the end of the event.
At the end of the third day, the top of the table has a Thailand one-two as EXP Esports and Buriram United Esports are at the very top. Including CGGG, it is three teams from this country in the top four, with RRQ Kazu from Indonesia splitting them after taking up the third spot.
So far, the Free Fire World Series 2023 has recorded 218K Peak Viewers, which came during Round 6 of the Knockout Stage on Day 3. With 16 kills, EXP Esports capped a great performance to end the weekend as the topper, no doubt sending its fans into delirium. The competition has also notched 1.5M Hours Watched and 127K Average Viewers over 12 hours of airtime so far.
There was an undoubted Portuguese flavor across the first three days thanks to the participation of three sides from Brazil: LOUD, Magic Squad, and MIBR. All three enjoy massive support from their and, and while they put in middling performances across the weekend, the fans stayed loyal and arrived in droves to cheer their team, even if it was just by catching the matches on the live stream.
This language topped the watch time on all three days, helping it do 73.1% better than the next-best entry on the overall leaderboard. With these kinds of numbers, there is a very good chance that this Free Fire tournament will do much better than its last two editions and come closer to the monster that is the Free Fire World Series 2021 Singapore, which remains the most popular esports event of all time.
There was a slow start for Spanish, which was the most popular and watched language last year thanks to the presence of the Argentine squad Naguara Team. It was founded by the country's highly popular streamer TheDonato, who has a known massive interest in Free Fire and dedicates a lot of his broadcasts to the game, ensuring he and his team pull in massive numbers of viewers when they are live.
The language is unlikely to reach those heights this year, but it will still play a vital part in helping this event become one of the more successful ones in the series. There will also be an interesting battle between the platforms to see who finishes second behind the dominant YouTube, although it could lose its watch time share if trends over the first weekend are any indication.
Compared to the last tournament in the Free Fire World Series in Bangkok, the ongoing iteration has done much better on all counts. However, since the former was held over two days while the current one will last longer under a different format and have more matches, concluding so early on would be premature.
The next weekend will run from November 17 to 19 and follow the same schedule as the first one. The top 12 will then move to the Points Rush Stage from November 24 to November 25, with their placings here deciding their starting points during the Grand Finals, which will occur on November 26. It is a long road ahead, and Free Fire fans can expect a lot more action and excitement before the season closes by crowning its unofficial world champion.
