2024 World Championship: new channel, team records & other viewership insights from Swiss Stage

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2024 World Championship is in full swing: after three rounds of the Swiss Stage, the first playoff teams have been determined. As the competition heats up, teams are not only battling for advancement but also setting personal audience records. The Swiss Stage has seen an increase in unique broadcast channels, and the popularity of Portuguese-language streams is on the rise, while audience numbers on AfreecaTV have dipped compared to last year.

To advance to the Knockout Stage, teams need to secure three wins, and only Gen.G Esports and LNG Esports have managed to do so for now. Most of the top spots in the group are predictably held by teams from the LCK and LPL, though there have been some surprises along the way.

Chinese teams Bilibili Gaming and Weibo Gaming have both lost two matches and now find themselves one series away from elimination. If they face off in the fourth round of the Swiss Stage, it will mark the first exit of a top team from the tournament.

In the elimination zone, four more teams are at risk, each with two losses: GAM Esports, MAD Lions KOI, paiN Gaming, and Team Liquid. By the evening of October 7, two of these teams will be heading home. 

2024 World Championship Swiss Stage Viewership Trends

The average viewership during the Swiss Stage has increased by 60% compared to the Play-In stage — similar to the trend observed between stages in Worlds 2023. However, the peak online viewership tells a different story: last year, this metric grew by only 50% between stages, while this year, it has skyrocketed by 96%.

Unique channels growth. As we noted earlier, the 2024 World Championship surpassed last year's event in terms of unique channels during the Play-In stage. Now, we can report that the number of channels in the Swiss Stage has increased even further — up by 20% compared to Worlds 2023.

New viewership records. Participants in the Swiss Stage, including Hanwha Life Esports, Top Esports, paiN Gaming, Team Liquid, and GAM Esports, have achieved new highs for the number of viewers in their matches.

• Top Esports —  2.82 million PV (vs T1);

• PaiN Gaming — 2.35 million PV (vs T1);

• Hanwha Life Esports — 2.29 million PV (vs G2 Esports);

• Team Liquid — 2.02 million PV (vs Weibo Gaming);

• GAM Esports — 1.52 million PV (vs Fnatic).

Some teams, like Hanwha Life Esports, have set new viewership records for the second time in this tournament.

Community Caster Records. Several streamers broke their channel records over the past weekend. For instance, Caedrel, the most popular English-language community caster, attracted over 227,400 concurrent viewers during the match between G2 Esports and Weibo Gaming. German streamer Tolkin also hit a personal best, drawing more than 51,300 viewers during the same match.

Trends by Language and Platform. The 2024 World Championship is generally outpacing last year's event in terms of viewership, with particularly notable increases in certain language segments. For example, Portuguese-language streams have seen a significant rise in viewership. Thanks to paiN Gaming's advancement to the Swiss Stage, the Average Viewers metric has jumped by 100,000 people, or 230%, compared to last year.

Most streaming platforms have increased their audience reach, but there’s one exception — AfreecaTV. Currently, both peak and average viewership on the Korean service have dropped by about 20-23%, and total watch time have nearly fallen to one-third of last year's figures. This means AfreecaTV is the only platform that has lost an audience compared to last year, at least during this Swiss Stage. Some of those viewers have shifted to new platforms like CHZZK, which weren't around last year.

The final matches of the Swiss Stage will take place on October 13, when all eight teams advancing to the Knockout Stage will be revealed. You can keep up with the results and viewership stats for the tournament on the reporting page.