2025 most watched esports teams

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After breaking down the most-watched teams within individual games, it’s time to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. This ranking focuses on overall esports watch time, aggregating live viewership across tournaments and matches regardless of platform or title. PC, console and mobile games all sit in the same table here, which makes the results far less forgiving and far more revealing.

Unsurprisingly, the popularity of specific games plays a decisive role in shaping the leaderboard. As a result, the elite group of most-watched rosters once again comes from just three ecosystems: the desktop heavyweights League of Legends and Counter-Strike, alongside the mobile titan Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. These titles continue to generate the largest and most consistent esports audiences globally, and their top teams benefit directly from that scale.

While the overall leader remains unchanged, the rest of the rankings tell a different story. The top 10 saw noticeable movement compared to last year, with several new names entering the list and established teams shifting positions. Counter-Strike, in particular, strengthened its presence, adding two more squads to the top 10 and drawing level with League of Legends in terms of representation. Notably, these were entirely new CS entries, highlighting how much turnover the scene experienced over the past year.

Korean League of Legends teams shine

If there was any suspense around the very top of the ranking, it didn’t last long. For the fourth year in a row, first place belongs to T1. Moreover, the gap remains enormous: by total Hours Watched, T1 outperformed the second-place team by roughly 65%, maintaining the same kind of dominance they displayed a year earlier.

What makes this even more striking is that 2025 was far from a smooth ride domestically. In the LCK, T1’s performances were, by their own standards, underwhelming, with fourth place in the regular season marking their highest domestic finish. Once again, however, the team found its redemption on the biggest stage. League of Legends World Championship proved to be their territory yet again, as T1 captured their third consecutive Worlds title, this time starting all the way from the very first stage of the event. It was a unique run in a unique year for a team that continues to defy standard competitive logic.

  Another exceptional year for T1   

Beyond T1, Korean League of Legends remained heavily represented in the top 10. Gen.G claimed second place overall, followed by Hanwha Life Esports in sixth and KT Rolster in seventh. All three delivered strong competitive seasons, though each followed a very different trajectory across the year.

Gen.G stood out for its consistency. The team once again put together an exceptional season, winning the LCK 2025 Season, the Mid-Season Invitational, and the Esports World Cup. Yet despite that domestic and international dominance, the familiar obstacle remained. Gen.G fell to T1 in the World Championship semifinals, narrowly missing the chance to finally overtake their long-time rivals on the year’s biggest stage.

For Hanwha Life Esports, the momentum came early. The team opened the season by winning the LCK Cup 2025, then went on to secure their first international trophy at the newly launched First Stand Tournament. The second half of the year remained solid, with a finals appearance in the LCK Season and a quarterfinal run at Worlds, though on both occasions Hanwha Life’s journey was halted by Gen.G.

The biggest surprise among the League of Legends representatives was KT Rolster. After finishing third in the LCK Season, the team truly made its mark at Worlds, where it surged all the way to the grand final, eliminating Gen.G along the way. That run not only reshaped expectations around the roster, but also translated into a sharp rise in viewership, securing KT Rolster a place among the most-watched teams of the year.

RRQ Hoshi drops from the top spot among MLBB teams

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang also left a clear mark on the overall rankings, with two teams from the same country making the top 10. Both representatives come from Indonesia, the undisputed core market of MLBB esports, where viewership for major domestic and international tournaments regularly reaches millions of concurrent viewers.

The highest-ranked MLBB team of the year was ONIC Esports, which finished third overall in the rankings. ONIC were the most successful Indonesian roster of the season, claiming titles in both MPL Indonesia Season 15 and MPL Indonesia Season 16. Internationally, the team remained competitive throughout the year, securing a fourth-place finish at the MLBB Mid Season Cup 2025 and reaching the later stages of several Snapdragon-sponsored events, even if those runs ultimately fell short of trophies.

  ONIC’s flawless MPL Indonesia year propels them past RRQ in viewership   

Somewhat unexpectedly, RRQ Hoshi finished behind ONIC in the overall rankings. Typically, RRQ Hoshi occupies the very top spot among MLBB teams in viewership-based lists, but 2025 told a different story. The roster struggled to convert popularity into results, ending the year without a single title. Their best performances came in the first half of the season, with a second-place finish at MPL Indonesia Season 15 and another runner-up placement at the ESL Snapdragon Pro Series: Mobile Masters 2025.

The second half of the year proved far more challenging. RRQ Hoshi placed 5th–8th at the MLBB Mid Season Cup 2025, and their domestic campaign ended on a low note when they failed to reach the playoffs in MPL Indonesia Season 16. As a result, despite remaining one of the most recognizable and followed teams in the MLBB ecosystem, RRQ Hoshi closed the year behind their domestic rivals in the overall watch time rankings.

A new Counter-Strike hierarchy takes shape

The highest-ranked Counter-Strike team in the top 10 was Team Vitality, finishing the year in fifth place overall. The French-led squad delivered a season for the history books, winning back-to-back Majors, lifting nine tier-S trophies and posting a long list of top-four finishes across the calendar. From a viewership perspective, this marked the strongest Counter-Strike showing in the overall rankings since NAVI’s 2021 peak, underlining just how exceptional Vitality’s year truly was. Few seasons in the history of competitive Counter-Strike combine dominance, consistency and audience interest at this level.

Further down the list, Team Spirit, MOUZ and Team Falcons occupied positions eight through ten, collectively illustrating how much the Counter-Strike landscape shifted in 2025. 

Team Spirit’s season was solid on paper, featuring several trophies and frequent playoff appearances, but it lacked the stability of their previous year. Ongoing roster adjustments, including the later swap involving Leonid “chopper” Vishnyakov and Ivan "zweih" Gogin in favor of Myroslav "Zont1x" Plakhotia and Boris "Magixx" Vorobyev, ultimately failed to keep the consistency that once defined the lineup.

  Team Vitality delivered one of the greatest seasons in Counter-Strike history   

By contrast, both MOUZ and Team Falcons followed a trajectory closer to Vitality’s, at least in terms of competitiveness, even if silverware remained limited. MOUZ enjoyed one of their strongest seasons in years, regularly pushing deep into tournaments and stacking top-four finishes. The January arrival of Lotan “Spinx” Giladi proved pivotal, appearing to complete a roster that finally looks balanced and battle-ready. While the trophy count stayed modest, the team exits 2025 firmly positioned as a serious contender heading into the next season.

Team Falcons, meanwhile, remained one of the most closely watched projects in Counter-Strike. The roster drew intense attention as yet another attempt at building a “superteam”, fueled by high-profile additions such as Nikola "NiKo" Kovač and Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov, alongside the highly touted young talent Maksim "kyousuke" Lukin from Team Spirit Academy. Immediate success proved elusive, but the overall step forward was undeniable. 

Compared to a year earlier, when top-eight finishes were rare, Falcons consistently challenged for top-two and top-four placements in one of the most competitive eras Counter-Strike has seen, often running head-to-head with a dominant Team Vitality. The results may not have matched the hype yet, but the progress is clear.

The table below ranks the most-watched esports teams of 2025 based on total Hours Watched across all major tournaments.

Top 10 Most-Watched Esports Teams of 2025