September kicked off the decisive stretch of the esports season, and the month delivered plenty of action for fans. Three tournaments broke past the 1.5M live viewers mark, with the spotlight dominated by the flagship events of the three major MOBA titles. Here are the top-audience events of the past month.
September 2025’s top tournament was the LCK 2025 Season, which this year featured a single extended season rather than the traditional spring and autumn splits. Not only did the tournament join the ranks of the most-watched esports events of all time, it also delivered remarkable concurrent viewership, peaking at over 2 million live viewers. It all came down to the playoffs at the region’s marquee derby between Gen.G Esports and T1, where Kim "Kim" Jung-su’s team edged out their rivals in a thrilling five-map showdown.
While the Korean League of Legends tournament attracted mostly Korean and Western audiences, MPL Indonesia Season 16 for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, which finished second, drew primarily from Southeast Asia, mainly Indonesia. The event peaked at over 1.9M concurrent viewers during the derby between arguably the region’s two top teams, ONIC and RRQ Hoshi. Notably, ONIC had already clinched a playoff spot with 11 straight wins, whereas RRQ sat outside the playoff zone with six losses in ten matches.
Closing out the top three is the iconic The International 2025. Even with a considerably smaller prize pool, it still attracts audiences far larger than any other Dota 2 tournament. The final, where Team Falcons overcame Xtreme Gaming, drew over 1.7M concurrent viewers at the peak of the deciding map.
Next in line are the shooters, with Valorant Champions 2025, currently underway in France, claiming fourth place. Paper Rex has emerged as the tournament’s most popular team, with their matches leading in viewership, and their showdown against one of Europe’s top sides, Fnatic, peaked at over 961,000 concurrent viewers.
Rounding out fifth place is Fortnite’s flagship event of the year, the FNCS 2025 Global Championship, signaling a resurgence for the game’s competitive scene, at least from a viewership perspective. The final round drew over 948,000 concurrent viewers at its peak, making it the most-watched Fortnite tournament since 2019.
For English-speaking audiences, the majority of viewers for most esports events, the top events remained the same as in the overall ranking, except one: the MPL.
Rounding out the top five was BLAST Open Fall 2025, one of the month’s three marquee Counter-Strike events. More than 332,000 live viewers watched G2 Esports stage a comeback, defeating the formidable Team Vitality in the final and thus ending a 10-month trophy drought.
Among esports channels attracting the biggest audiences, the top 10 featured three LCK channels (Korean, Vietnamese, and English), along with three covering The International 2025.
Together with the MPL channel, the top 10 included channels streaming Battlegrounds Mobile India Showdown 2025, now in its decisive matches, and the channel airing RoV Pro League 2025 Winter, one of the year’s marquee Arena of Valor tournaments.
