Viewership data for ALGS Split 2 Playoffs Day 1

This weekend the Apex Legends Global Series 2023 Split 2 Playoffs are taking place at the Copper Box Arena in London, England. The penultimate tournament of the season’s circuit takes place before the ALGS Championship this September. 40 teams go head to head in the Major tournament competing for a $1,000,000 USD prize pool. Teams fight through the Group Stages before advancing to the Bracket Stage, taking place on the 15th of July. After that, the best 20 teams will continue into Sunday’s Finals.

The first day of the tournament took place on Thursday, 13th of July. 40 teams are split into four groups of then and each group will then play each other. One key difference coming into the 22-23 season’s Split 2 Playoffs is that each series will be broadcasted and have its own individual time slot. In previous years, the Group Stage would see two matches played at the same time, meaning all 40 teams competing simultaneously. This time around, each Group Stage match has its own timeslot, so no games take place simultaneously.

After Day 1, Groups A and C played two of their three games, with Groups B and D still having two games to go. TSM, who won the ALGS 2023 Split 1 Playoffs, have already secured their spot in the winners’ bracket and Alliance, winners of the ALGS 2023 Split 2 Pro League EMEA, followed suit. Worth noting, these teams did benefit from belonging to the Groups which played two matches on Day 1.

With all the key details out of the way, let’s turn our focus to the Day 1 viewership metrics for the Major tournament.

ALGS: 2023 Split 2 Playoffs Day 1 viewership statistics

Comparison of Day 1 viewership performance between ALGS 2023 Split 2 Playoffs and the 2023 Split 1 Playoffs

After only the first day of the event, the ALGS 2023 Split 2 Playoffs accumulated enough Hours Watched to rank within the top ten most-watched Apex Legends tournaments of all time. The S-tier tournament saw 2.67M Hours Watched throughout only the first day, an increase of 230% compared to Split 1 of the same year. This makes the first day of the event the most successful Apex Legends tournament since the 2022 Split 2 Playoffs, over a year ago.

The event’s success was helped along by publisher EA’s announcement that Twitch Drops would be enabled throughout the event. Each of the four days of the event opens up the possibility for players to earn a unique drop, with fans being required to watch at least an hour of one of the official partnered streamers to unlock a drop.

Although we expect Peak Viewers to reach its true potential on the final day of the tournament, the London-based tournament’s Day 1 performance was strong enough to rank again within the top ten most-viewed Apex Legends tournaments of all time, per Peak Viewers. Both Peak Viewers and Average Viewers saw an increase in comparison to the Split 1 Playoffs of this year, but where the tournament exploded was Airtime.

As previously explained, the new change to how matches are scheduled has led to a huge increase in Airtime for the event, which definitely increased watch time. Whereas Split 1 of this year began at 17.00 local time, the ongoing event was required to begin on Thursday at 09.00 local time with a talk show, to accommodate the expanded format.

Airtime was also minorly affected by a delay at the start of the event. The ALGS 2023 Split 2 Playoffs marks a surprising change in tournament organisation: the matches are to be played on online servers. Usually, LAN events use LAN servers to run games, giving players the best possible connection to the game server. When it was revealed to the public that the event would be hosted on online servers, players and fans immediately speculated about possible DDoS attacks.

Fears were proven valid as the first match of the event was paused and delayed for over 20 minutes. However, EA has commented on the delay explaining it was due to on-site technical issues and they have no evidence a DDoS attack was conducted.

The ALGS 2023 Split 2 Playoffs are shaping up to be one of the most-watched Apex Legends events in the history of the game, with Day 1’s viewership alone already cementing it as a major success in terms of viewership. Keep up to date on all the data with Esports Charts on the official tournament page for the event.