ALGS 2024 Split 1 Playoffs became the fifth-most-watched Apex Legends tournament
The new year of the ALGS has finished its first stage with the ALGS: 2024 Split 1 Playoffs. The million-dollar event culminated in over half a million concurrent viewers, and crowned a new king as champions of the Apex Legends esports scene for the first part of the year. Although the ALGS introduced 12 new partnered teams this year, a team outside of these partnered 12 took home the championship.
The ALGS: 2024 Split 1 Playoffs was slightly different from the previous year, featuring an expanded Group Stage, but keeping the same format for the Bracket and Finals stages. One key change, Apex Legends announced a new Solos Showdown event, featuring content creators and personalities from the community. The new showmatch received particularly low viewership, ultimately deflating the Average Viewers metric for the Finals stage, and the event as a whole.
The ALGS: 2024 Split 1 Playoffs received over 8.82M Hours Watched across over 46 hours of broadcasting time, making it the fifth-most-watched Apex Legends event ever. The event benefited particularly from the long broadcasting time, which was longer than both the Split 1 and Split 2 Playoffs from 2023.
The event culminated in the final round 8 of the Finals stage, reaching 567.6K Peak Viewers. A large portion of these viewers came from Japanese audiences, who contributed 211.9K PV to this total. Japan continued its domination of Apex Legends viewership, coming second only to the English-language official broadcasts and multinational audiences.
Although Japanese audiences are the most passionate for the title, the South Korean roster of REJECT WINNITY was the ultimate champion of the event. The team is newly founded, born of a partnership between Reject and Winnity, and they picked up the former roster of Japanese organization REALIZE, whose current Japanese roster was not able to qualify for the Playoffs event.
Fnatic, who currently field an all-Japanese roster for Apex Legends, finished in a strong third place at the event. The strong performance of the Japanese roster throughout Playoffs was surely a boost for the Japanese-language viewership at the event.
Comparing the viewership for this year’s event to the previous one, viewership was generally on the rise. This 2024 Split 1 Playoffs event garnered a 27.6% higher watch time than last year’s, which was influenced by the Airtime metric rising by 41.7%: a byproduct of the new showmatch and the expanded Groups stage.
Average Viewers for the event fell by 9.9%, significantly influenced by the aforementioned showmatch which was a low point for the event’s overall viewership. The Group Stage for the 2024 edition recorded slightly lower AV, due to the expanded nature of the stage which added an extra 11 and a half hours to the broadcasting time.
However, despite the new changes which negatively influenced the average viewership, the 2024 Split 1 Playoffs recorded a peak viewership 4.4% higher than the previous year. At 567.6K Peak Viewers, this event was the fifth-most-popular Apex Legends esports event ever: falling behind only the Split 2 Playoffs of 2022 and 2022, and these years’ respective Championship events.
One key factor in the lower average viewership for the event was the lack of interest from community casters. Last year’s Split 1 Playoffs were held in Europe, an optimal time zone for attracting viewership from Europe, Asia, and North America, whereas this year’s event was held in North America. The timing of the event made it difficult for international creators to support the event, especially Europeans. The Finals event of the tournament only began at 1AM for central European fans, and finished closer to 5AM.
This year’s Split 1 Playoffs recorded only 165 channels broadcasting the event, a stark 40.2% drop compared to the 276 channels which broadcasted the event last year. Although there were fewer community casters supporting the tournament this year, some of these creators still were as popular as the official broadcasts for the event.
Community casters are critical for Apex Legends’ esports viewership. Despite this year seeing more than 100 channels fewer than the 2023 Split 1 Playoffs, community casters nevertheless were responsible for 73.5% of the event’s total watch time. If this tournament’s schedule was better-suited for European and Asian community casters, the watch time of this event would have likely been much higher.
The official playapex Twitch channel was the leader for the entire event, receiving 1.62M Hours Watched throughout the tournament. The YouTube Live official broadcast from the Apex Global channel was significantly less popular than its Twitch counterpart, but still received solid viewership at 710.8K HW. These two channels were the only two official broadcasts featured during the event, and they contributed a sizeable 26.5% to the tournament’s total watch time.
In terms of community casters, NiceWigg was the most-watched creator to broadcast the event. The 100 Thieves-affiliated streamer was live every day throughout the event, and his viewership was also boosted by the power of Twitch Drops. The American creator streamed the event from live inside the venue itself, giving fans a peek inside the atmosphere of the event. In total, he received 1.51M HW for his personal Twitch channels thanks to his coverage.
On the other side of the globe, Japanese creator RAGE was the most-watched non-English streamer for the event, and if the viewership for his YouTube and Twitch channel (esports_rage) is combined, he would be the most-watched community caster of the event. The combined viewership of his two channels fell just behind the official broadcaster, with 1.61M Hours Watched accumulated across both live streaming platforms.
The ALGS Split 1 Playoffs showed an increase of viewership for the yearly event, with both the Peak Viewers and Hours Watched metrics showing an increase compared to 2023. If the event was held in a better location for European and Asian fans’ viewing, the event would have likely been even more popular. If the remaining two major international events for the 2024 ALGS calendar are held in more suitable time zones for these fans, and if the events can draw the community casting viewership power they previously enjoyed, 2024 may be the most successful year for Apex Legends esports yet.
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