FC 24's first world championship attracts fewer peak viewers than inaugural Pro Open event
The FC Pro 24 World Championship was held over four days at the Uber Eats Music Hall in Berlin to crown the world champion of EA Sports FC 24. While it could not match the hype around the new game's first-ever tournament, the FC Pro 24 Open, it did end as one of the more popular virtual football events since 2023.
This $1,000,000 competition saw the top four players from the FC Pro Open and the 28 best pros from the FC Pro Leagues competing in one event comprising a standard group stage followed by a single elimination round. Held from July 10 to 13, it saw Denmark's Vejrgang ease past YuvalBeli from Israel 7:0 to be crowned the new game's maiden world champion.
The tournament winner, representing RBLZ Gaming, took home $250,000 to back up his second-place finish at the FC Pro 24 Open. Meanwhile, the runner-up, who plays for Fama Esports, became richer by $150,000 and caught the attention of the community after not even making the FC Pro 24 Open lineup.
It has to be remembered that there were three simple steps in the esports series for EA Sports FC 24, which was released to much fanfare last September. The FC Pro 24 Open helps identify the best teams in the globe while the subsequent FC Pro Leagues decide the remaining players to be sent to the World Championship, which acts as the final phase and determines the world's best player.
The FC Pro 24 World Championship recorded 113.7K Peak Viewers during the summit clash, which just about edged the Knockout Stage Round 1 clash between Morocco's xcharifx and Nathansr22 from Brazil. It is interesting to see that the top five matches are pretty closely bunched together in terms of numbers, showing that there was no standout player in terms of fan support or following, which is not a bad thing for any game.
Further accentuating the above point is the fact that when looking at the top five most popular players list, the two finalists do not figure on the podium. Readers who want to access more details on such specific stats, including numbers on teams and players, can check out our PRO subscription here.
The FC Pro 24 World Championship also registered 1.2M Hours Watched and 61.5K Average Viewers over 20 hours of airtime. This was nowhere near the audience reach of the FC Pro 24 Open or its FC Pro 24 Open - Global Qualifier, which remains the most popular competition in the history of virtual football with 340K PV.
What helped this qualifying stage event and the FC Pro 24 Open do so well was that Drops were available for viewers who watched the tournament's broadcast on official EA SPORTS channels; they had the opportunity to receive player card packs and other items in the game. After all, these rewards are a proven strategy for increasing audience numbers, both for competitive play and games in general, especially for a niche discipline like FC 24.
The participation of the world's best players from football clubs like Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund, Lorient, and Inter Miami also helped attract fans. With community casting also allowed, the main event and its qualifier attracted 57 and 109 channels to cover the matches. Not surprisingly, the most popular among these handles were the official channels on Twitch and YouTube.
Drops were also a big reason the FC Pro 24 Open finished as virtual football's most-watched event ever with 6M HW and its third-most popular one ever. It did more than twice the watch time of the next-most-viewed event in the Esports Charts database, the FUT Champions Cup Barcelona 2018.
When it comes to the FC Pro 24 World Championship, it was covered by only 41 channels, the least among the three global competitions discussed in this article. Moreover, players from countries that usually draw more audiences, like Germany and Brazil, could not reach the Quarterfinals, affecting interest among their fans. This also meant that the presence of Drops across the two stages could not persuade enough viewers to tune in to catch the action live.
English, too, saw a drop in its share of the overall watch time compared to the previous two events, making the world championship the only one where it accrued less than 80%. With the language seeing almost no representation in the playoffs, audience interest seemingly waned so much that it was crucial to its reduced viewership numbers.
A good reflection of this point was the performance of the official Twitch channel, which saw falls of 654.2% and 123% compared to the FC Pro Open event and its global qualifier, respectively. Even the official YouTube channel’s HW figure was 105.3% less than the Open competition, although it did slightly better than the qualifier tournament (11.2%).
Nevertheless, this season-ending event did well enough to end as the fourth-most watched and fourth-most popular football simulator competition since 2023. While that might not do justice to an event meant to be the game's world championship, it is a good enough start for Electronic Arts to work on for the upcoming season.
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