Most popular DreamLeague S23 team fails to make playoffs: what's the impact?

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The group stage of DreamLeague Season 23 showed less impressive statistics compared to the previous season. Additionally, Team Liquid, the most popular team in the group stage, has been eliminated and won't be participating in the playoffs. This could negatively impact the overall viewership statistics of the tournament; however, the release of a global patch in Dota 2 might improve the situation.

DreamLeague Season 23 has a slightly different format from the previous season. The number of participants decreased from 16 to 12, which led to a reduction in the number of group stages from two to one. These changes directly affected the number of matches, resulting in a 37% decrease in total watch time. Because of that, the average and peak viewership numbers are more objective metrics for comparing the two seasons, but Season 23 performed poorly in that regard too.

The average number of viewers during the group stage decreased by 22% compared to the first group stage of Season 22, while the peak viewership dropped even more significantly, by 24%. Notably, there was a decline in peak viewership for both English and Russian broadcasts. Several factors contributed to this, including the reduction in the number of simultaneous official broadcasts and the absence of some high-profile teams like Team Spirit and OG.

Several matches were broadcast simultaneously during the group stage. When examining the most popular matches, there is almost no difference in viewership between the seasons: for example, the series between Team Liquid and Heroic peaked at 173.9K concurrent viewers, while the series between Team Spirit and Tundra Esports reached a peak of 172.7K concurrent viewers.

The series between Team Liquid and Xtreme Gaming, and BetBoom Team versus Tundra Esports became the most popular matchups of the stage. Interestingly, Team Liquid led in watch time and average viewership during the group stage. However, Team Liquid did not make it to the playoffs: the final stage of the tournament will proceed without the most popular team from the group stage, which could negatively impact overall viewership statistics.

Conversely, in the early hours of May 23, Valve released a major balance patch 7.36 for Dota 2. The developers updated all heroes, as well as many items and abilities. Professional players have to adapt to the new patch during the tournament, which typically adds more excitement to the matches and increases viewer interest.

The playoff matches of DreamLeague Season 23 will take place from May 23 to May 26, featuring eight teams. You can follow the progress and viewership statistics of the tournament on the coverage page.