Eastern Europe and Brazil surpass West Europe in viewership at BLAST Fall Showdown 2023 qualifiers
BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2023 qualifying tournaments, held by third-party organizers, have come to an end. Among all the events, viewers were the most interested in matches in Eastern Europe, where the Russian derby between Cloud9 and Team Spirit took place in the final. An almost identical audience was attracted by the Brazilian tournament, covered by Gaules, but Western Europe was inferior to both regions in terms of audience reach.
BLAST Premier: Fall European Showdown 2023 Qualifiers Viewership
In the Showdown stage, the teams are joined by the winners of local leagues and tournaments held by BLAST partners. Typically, these tournament operators specialize in specific regions where they hold qualifiers.
The Fall European Showdown 2023 Qualifiers consisted of four tournaments. Events in Eastern and Western Europe were organized by the Relog Media. This Serbian studio has a large number of online leagues and events, such as CCT Online, Pinnacle Cup, Funspark ULTI, and others. Relog Media began holding qualifiers for BLAST in 2023.
Qualification for the Fall European Showdown in the Iberia region (Spain & Portugal) was carried out by the Portuguese company E2Tech, which began collaborating with BLAST back in 2020. E2Tech is mainly known for its RTP Arena Cup and Master League Portugal tournaments. Among other things, it also holds LAN tournaments in Lisbon.
The Finnish platform Pelaajat.com has been organizing qualifications for the European Showdown for BLAST for several years in a row. In particular, Pelaajat holds the Nordic Masters events, where teams from Scandinavia participate.
The Polish team 9INE became the best at RES Western European Masters: Fall 2023. In the fight for the quota, they were able to get ahead of Fnatic and Into The Breach. At the RES Eastern European Masters: Fall 2023 tournament, the Cloud9 squad turned out to be the strongest — its rivals for the Showdown quota were such teams as Monte, Team Spirit, Eternal Fire, and others.
The best teams from Spain and Portugal competed in the RTP Arena Cup 2023, and the victory went to Movistar Riders. Pelaajat.com Nordic Masters Fall 2023 featured teams from Scandinavia — MOUZ played there, as well as several interesting mixes with famous players, but the Victory Zigzag team performed best of all.
Viewership statistics for these events showed that events from the Relog Media studio in Eastern and Western Europe attracted more viewers than other tournaments. This was greatly helped by Russian-language broadcasts in Eastern qualification because two Russian teams played in the finals: Cloud9 and Team Spirit.
Pelaajat.com Nordic Masters Fall 2023 unexpectedly showed a very weak result in terms of audience reach, although there were multiple teams to look at besides MOUZ: for example, the JANO Esports lineup led by Allu, the Swedish mix 416Olsk featuring PlesseN and twist. There were also the Danes Preasy Esport with nicoodoz and refrezh on the roster. However, the tournament attracted only 3.9K Peak Viewers, which was the worst result of all Showdown qualifying events this fall.
Results of the BLAST Premier: Fall American Showdown 2023 Qualifications
Unlike Europe, the American division only had three local qualifiers, covering North America, South America, and Asia. The North American qualifiers were run by Mexican tournament operator Liga Ace Esports, who have run IESF regional qualifiers in the past and helped run FiReLEAGUE. Last year, Liga Ace began holding qualifiers for BLAST.
The agency TodosGamers Studio was responsible for the qualifying stage in South America. This company began hosting tournaments for BLAST in 2022, and is also known for its TG Rush series of online tournaments.
Starting in 2022, qualifiers for BLAST in Asia will be hosted by 5E Arena, a popular matchmaking platform specializing in the Asian CS:GO scene. In general, an interesting situation happened with the Asia region. Back in the spring, the winner of the Asian qualifiers went to play in the European Showdown, but this fall the organizers changed the rules — now the team from Asia qualification will play in the American Showdown.
The Forsaken mix led by Canadian captain stanislaw became the best at the Ace North American Masters Fall 2023 tournament: local mix teams such as Party Astronauts, Wildcard Gaming, Nouns Esports, and others performed there. 00 Nation with coldzera had no problems at TG Masters Fall 2023: the Brazilians confidently beat both their fellow countrymen from other clubs and teams from Latin America.
The last participant in the Fall American Showdown was the team The MongolZ, which won the 5E Arena Asia Cup Fall 2023. Neither TyLoo, nor 5yclone, nor Lynn Vision Gaming could stop them.
Talking about viewership, the most popular qualifying tournament in the Fall American Showdown 2023 was TG Masters Fall 2023: it got almost 30K Peak Viewers. There is nothing to be surprised here, since TG Masters Fall 2023 was covered by Gaules, one of the most popular CS:GO streamers in the world.
The Ace North American Masters Fall 2023 league showed the poorest audience reach: only 5.2K Peak Viewers. Even teams from Mongolia two times exceeded this result. Unfortunately, such low figures are not surprising: even tier-1 American CS:GO teams rarely attract a large audience, so there’s hardly anything one can expect from the tier-2 squads.
Viewership dynamics of qualifications
Local tournaments usually do not attract a large audience, since top teams rarely play there. If we talk about the dynamics of viewership at such tournaments, then it can change greatly even from a minor factor. For example, from the participation of a specific team or from the stream of a community caster. For example, this year the spring and summer qualifications of the RES Western European Masters were won by the same team: 9INE. However, in the spring, this tournament was covered only by official broadcast channels, and in the fall the matches were streamed by the popular community caster Izakooo. As a result, Peak Viewers increased from 2.4K to 17.7K, in fact, thanks to only one streamer.
Streamer Izakooo on Twitch
There is also the opposite example when TG Masters: Spring 2023 attracted 133K Peak Viewers, and TG Masters Fall 2023 — only 29.8K PV. Both tournaments were covered by the Brazilian streamer Gaules, but why is there such a big difference? The fact is that in the spring Imperial Esports played at the tournament with star-player FalleN in the lineup — his team that attracted the most viewers. Since then, FalleN has moved to FURIA Esports, but did not play in the qualifications, as the organizers invited the team directly.
If we talk about other qualifications, this year RES East European Masters (from 26K PV to 36K PV) and 5E Arena Asia (from 8K PV to 12K PV) showed a slight increase in audience reach. At the same time, the peak viewership of Nordic Masters decreased from 5.6K PV to 3.9K PV.
More details about BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2023
The BLAST Premier: Fall American Showdown 2023 and BLAST Premier: Fall European Showdown 2023 tournaments will be held online from October 8 to 10. Each of them will give away $67.5K, as well as one quota for BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2023.
BLAST Premier: Fall European Showdown 2023 participants:
BLAST Premier: Fall American Showdown 2023 participants:
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