As part of our series of reports summing up 2024 in the esports industry, Esports Charts presents rankings of the most-watched and most popular esports tournaments for the year. These events span a wide list of titles and genres, from mobile gaming’s MLBB to the classic Counter-Strike franchise. Compared to 2024, the top-ranking events of the year were spread across a slightly more varied list of games.
In 2023, the most popular events of the year represented only three games: League of Legends, MLBB, and Counter-Strike. In 2024, viewership for the year was not only generally higher, but also represented more corners of the industry. Dota 2 and Valorant are the two largest benefactors, as these esports titles have entered the top 10 after failing to make the cut last year.
At the top of our most-watched events ranking, the 2024 World Championship for League of Legends was the top tournament, with 190.9M Hours Watched (HW) accumulated. The year-ending LoL tournament has built a reputation in recent years for constantly growing and improving on its viewership, and 2024 was no different. This year saw increases in viewership from growing audiences for League of Legends, such as Vietnamese and Brazilian. Explore our entire breakdown of the records achieved at Worlds 2024 in our dedicated article.
Read also: Worlds 2024: Lists of All Viewership Records and Achievements
On the other side of MOBA esports, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang stands at the forefront of mobile gaming esports, mostly thanks to the massive Indonesian audiences. The MPL Indonesia reached over 110 million HW twice in 2024, and MPL Indonesia Season 14 became the most-watched iteration of the series ever. The MPL, especially in Indonesia, continued its rapid growth as one of esports’ premiere regional circuits.
MLBB also contributed M6 World Championship to the ranking. Although the world championship event enjoyed strong peak viewership, it was unable to keep up with the MPL events, which were broadcast for hundreds of hours. League of Legends also benefitted from highly-watched regional leagues to a slightly lesser extent: the LCK series is the premiere regional circuit for League of Legends and appeals to its largest audience, Korean fans.
In 2024, Counter-Strike, Dota 2, and Valorant contributed one event each to the most-watched tournaments of the year. Each esports game was represented by its most significant event: the PGL Copenhagen Major 2024 for Counter-Strike, The International 2024 for Dota 2, and Valorant Champions 2024 for Vaorant. Each of the events enjoyed an average viewership larger than the top-performing LCK events, but their short nature compared to these long seasonal events limited their potential watch time.
When comparing esports tournament’s popularity, peak concurrent viewers can be a more fitting metric for comparison. This singular metric reflects the peak popularity of an event in esports broadcasting, and statistics are not distorted by broadcasting time, like with total watch time.
Standing at the forefront of the esports industry, Worlds 2024 received 6.94 million peak concurrent viewers. The yearly event fell just short of the mythical 7 million PV figure the industry has been chasing, but the result was still a new esports record.
Aside from this popular outlier, other top events in the MOBA genre were able to reach over 4M concurrent viewers. The M6 World Championship was the second-most popular event of the year, even though the event failed to increase its peak viewership compared to last year’s M5.
The MPL Indonesia Season 14 was also extremely popular, being the only regional circuit to achieve such a high viewership in 2024: the only other regional events to appear on our ranking this year were the MPL Indonesia Season 13, LCK Spring 2024, and LCK Regional Finals 2024. While League of Legends usually reaches a much higher peak than MLBB for its year-end international events, the mobile title’s most popular region is outpacing League of Legends’ historic Korean community.
Counter-Strike and Valorant also made appearances in the ranking, thanks to international LAN events. Interestingly, Valorant’s world championship event was actually less popular than the VCT 2024: Masters Madrid tournament earlier in the year. The event reached its peak viewership as Sentinels, one of Valorant’s most popular esports organizations, won their first international event in years.
Overall, the 2024 rankings were slightly more diverse than last year’s results. Esports titles like Valorant, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike were able to contribute more consistently to the top of the industry, whereas the domination of MLBB and League of Legends has calmed down slightly.
Heading into 2024, League of Legends and MLBB seem primed to continue their viewership dominance in esports. Both titles generated strong viewership for their year-end events, and the year saw them also develop critical audiences for their esports events. For example, Vietnamese grew significantly throughout 2024 in LoL viewership, and is now one of the esports title’s major audiences. In MLBB, Indonesia continues to dominate event viewership, and the MPL Indonesia is finding new heights year after year.
Esports Charts will continue our 2024 Esports Results series throughout the end of the year and into the beginning of 2025. We will present viewership rankings, lists, and breakdowns of the esports industry for the year, powered by our comprehensive database of viewership statistics for events.
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