ALGS 2023 Championship receives less watch time than the Split 2 Playoffs of the same year
The ALGS 2023 Championship has come and gone. On the 10th of September, the event ended with TSM achieving first place followed by OpTic Gaming in second. Previously, we compared Day 1 viewership of the 2023 event to the previous year’s event and noted a drop in viewership. Sadly for the circuit, this drop continued throughout the event and watch time was low for the series.
2022 edition of the event was the first LAN Championship event for the discipline and it set an all-time record in watch-time for the discipline with over 11M Hours Watched. Viewership seemed to be on the rise for the discipline this year, as the 2023 Split 2 Playoffs reached 10.6M hours of watch time, roughly a million more hours compared to Split 2 of the previous year, and became the second-most-watched event in the discipline’s history.
Although the ALGS 2023 Championship was able to become the third-most-watched event in the discipline’s history, it did fail to grow compared to last year. Not only did the event receive less viewership than the 2022 Championship, but it even received slightly less viewership than the Split 2 Playoffs event of this year.
ALGS 2023 Championship Viewership Statistics
In total, the ALGS 2023 Championship event capped off the 22-23 season with 10.5M hours of watch time. The event received a solid amount of hours in watch time but the event also benefited from a new format for the event schedule. Last year, the events saw multiple matches take place and be casted at the same time.
However, coming into this year the event organisers decided to give every match a chance to shine and give them their own time slot. This decision is one that hugely benefited the ALGS in terms of watch time, and the 2023 event was live for over 8 hours longer than its 2022 counterpart. Considering the 223K average concurrent viewers that were viewing the broadcasts for the event throughout, we can estimate that this change in format won the ALGS about 1.8M hours of watch time.
Viewership reached a natural peak during the Finals for the event, as viewership steadily climbed upwards as the rounds progressed. For the final eighth round, over 591K peak concurrent viewers spectated TSM’s path to victory. TSM struggled to find their footing in the finals, wracking up very few points compared to main rivals OpTic Gaming. However, they managed to win the final three rounds in a row to become the victors and the Peak Viewers figure saw a solid increase as their winning streak continued.
As mentioned the ALGS 2023 Championship event was unable to overthrow the 2022 Championship event as the most-watched event in the discipline’s history. Using our compare function on our website, let’s look at the viewership for the Championship and Split 2 Playoffs events for the previous two seasons.
Comparison of 2023 ALGS events to the previous year
In terms of watch time, the 2023 Championship event wasn’t able to hold a candle to the other events of the year. In previous years the Split 2 Playoffs event has managed to outperform the championship event in some metrics, but this year marked the first time that the event was unable to best the Split 2 Playoffs in terms of Hours Watched. 2022 followed this formula, as the Split 2 Playoffs received 9.6M hours of watch time and the Championship event 11.3M. However, in 2023 the Split 2 Playoffs was the most-watched event of the year.
The Championship for this year did receive solid viewership, enough to become the third-most-watched event in the discipline’s history: but it was not able to consistently build on the viewership that the discipline had been experiencing this year.
Both the Split 2 Playoffs event and the 2023 Championship benefited heavily from the change to the format of the tournament with the longer Airtime. In terms of Average Viewers, the 2022 Split 2 Playoffs received almost 50K more concurrent viewers throughout the entire event compared to this year’s respective event.
Looking at the tournaments compared in terms of a different metric, Peak Viewers, the inflation from the longer airtime becomes less problematic for comparison. The 2022 Split 2 Playoffs actually received the highest number of Peak Viewers in Apex Legends’ history. In 2022, the Split 2 Playoffs outperformed the Championship event in terms of Peak Viewers but not Hours Watched, whereas in 2023 this was reversed.
The 2023 Championship does outrank the Split 2 Playoffs of the same year in this metric, but only just. Despite the finale of the 22-23 season coming to a climactic finish with TSM winning the event, concurrent viewers remained relatively low compared to its own viewership for the year.
Overall, the 2023 Championship event of the 22-23 ALGS season was one of the most-watched and most popular events in Apex Legends’ history. However, compared to previous events in the circuit viewership was surely not as high as event organisers may have been hoping for, as the growth of the discipline is beginning to slow down.
Although the 2023 event was unable to best the 2022 championship, not all was negative for the discipline. Comparing the two years of Battle Royale gameplay, the 2023 event actually saw some growth compared to 2022 in some languages and there were brand new community casters who received large viewership compared to even the official broadcasts of the events. Keep and eye out for our articles covering these statistical pieces of interest later in this week.
The ALGS is still in its early days and the 23-24 season will be the fourth of its kind for the Battle Royale title. The organisers of the circuit still have a chance to develop a loyal audience, but failing to grow in the third year of the circuit is not a healthy sign for the viewership. Check out our statistics for the event yourself on the tournament page here.
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