The world championship for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, labeled the Six Invitational 2023, ended yesterday in Montreal after 13 days of intense action, bringing to an end the game’s tournament season and crowning G2 Esports as the champion. The tournament was held by Ubisoft, the developer and publisher of this tactical shooter, and ESL.
After a Group Stage and Playoffs, the Grand Finals saw w7m esports and G2 Esports face off for the trophy and a winners’ purse of $1,000,000, with the latter coming out on top. The tournament MVP award went to G2’s Benjamaster, while another player from the organization, Doki, had the most MVP wins at four. w7m, the runners-up, took home $450,000.
The first few Six Invitational tournaments, beginning in 2017, took place in Montreal, near Ubisoft's headquarters. However, it moved to Paris in 2021, while the 2022 edition was hosted by Stockholm, before returning to Montreal this year.
The top matches by peak viewership for the Six Invitational 2023 were the Grand Finals meeting between G2 Esports and w7m (232K PV), the Playoffs Day 5 match-up between G2 and Oxygen (164K), and the w7m versus KOI battle from the Playoffs Day 3 (155K).
In terms of language numbers, English was the most successful one, with 155K PV, followed by Portuguese at 52K and French’s 18.9K. Japanese (9.5K) and Spanish (8.9K) rounded out the top five. This was in keeping with the quite obvious fact that English is Rainbow Six Siege’s most popular language worldwide.
The most popular teams were, unsurprisingly, G2, w7m, and KOI Esports, the two finalists and a squad owned by one of the most popular Spanish streamers today, ibai. G2, one of the biggest and most popular esports organizations in the world, lived up to its billing, while w7m and KOI continued their recent good performances in the international arena.
When it comes to streaming and the effect this had on the Six Invitational 2023 and vice versa, we can see that there was a lot of demand for the event on platforms like Twitch and YouTube Gaming. The tournament registered a PV number of 231K on Twitch and an AV count of 106K, with the most popular channel being the official Rainbow Six Siege handle itself, which registered a PV of 122K and a total HW of 7.2 million.
There were over 50 channels that covered the competition, which was a big factor in helping bring in the HW number recorded above, although that did not bring in better PV numbers. The fact that so many watched the event on the official Rainbow Six Siege handle, which was the channel that streamed the event the most, must have helped the channel grow in subs and follower count, which can only be a good thing considering Ubisoft has big plans for the esports scene of the game, as we will see later in this article.
Interestingly, the main channel of the event coverage, Rainbow6, became the second most-watched channel of the entire Twitch platform during the days of the event. It managed to amass more Hours Watched than xQc, ESL_CSGO, and many other prominent esports channels & content creators.
Viewership stats from event
The Six Invitational 2023, held over almost two weeks, did not quite meet the viewership numbers of previous Ubisoft Rainbow Six Siege world championships, but it was successful enough to close out the season on a high.
In terms of Hours Watched, the 2023 edition came in third across the seven total events, which signifies a solid performance from the event. The Six Invitational 2021 remains the leader in this regard, having registered an HW stat of 18 million.
When it comes to Peak Viewers, this year’s tournament took a big hit, finishing in the second-last position. Perhaps the sheer amount of other esports events taking place simultaneously hurt the Six Invitational 2023 when it comes to PV, but it is definitely something that Ubisoft and ESL will look at when planning future competitions.
New global esports circuit for Rainbow Six Siege
Ubisoft announced a couple of months that there would be a new global esports circuit for its popular FPS game. The French company also revealed a multi-year partnership with BLAST that will see the Danish organization taking up the responsibility of producing every event in the new Rainbow Six Siege esports circuit.
The new Rainbow Six Siege esports circuit begins in March 2023 and ends in February next year. March to April will see Stage 1, where teams from every region can qualify for the first Six Major of the year via an open qualifier for all regions. Else, they can do so by a closed league in six of the nine regions, at least for now.
The regions include Europe, North America, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, and Hispanic Latin America. Ubisoft is still working on the final details for the remaining regions, which means a possible closed league in the future.
The company said:
“Regular opportunities for up-and-coming players to compete against pros and show their potential are crucial for the long-term health and competitiveness of the scene. In parallel, certain regions will also run closed leagues where fans will be able to enjoy the top teams competing at the highest level of Siege Esports.”
This new global esports circuit will see Ubisoft promote more high-stakes matches, thus attracting more interest from viewers. Another objective is to help the game develop a fan base around the world, meaning more people playing and watching it. The success of this plan will be crucial to giving Rainbow Six Siege’s esports scene a new lease of life, perhaps bringing its competitive scene closer to FPS industry giants like Valorant, or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
