BLAST Premier World Final 2024: fans back Astralis with CadiaN signing, but timezones could seriously impact viewership
The season-ending BLAST Premier event, the BLAST Premier: World Final 2024, begins on October 30. The tournament will host a $1,000,000 prize pool and bring some of the best teams in the world to Sentosa, Singapore. The winner will take home $500,000, and BLAST Premier could potentially host one of its most popular tournaments ever, but we don’t expect it to be a record-setting one.
In collaboration with betting brand GG.BET, Esports Charts presents the viewership for BLAST Premier leading up to this World Final 2024, and also a projected peak viewership for season-ending event. We also thank DATA.BET, the premium esports betting solution provider, for their assistance in collecting pre-tournament betting statistics
BLAST Premier: World Final 2024 Participants
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
BLAST Premier’s Upwards Trend in 2024
Throughout the 2024 season, BLAST Premier has reached strong viewership for its Final events. The Spring Showdown 2024 was also one of the most popular Showdown events in the BLAST Premier catalogue, but generally, the Finals events were where BLAST shined the brightest. The initial Spring Final 2024 tournament reached 640.1K Peak Viewers, which was enough for it to become the fifth-most popular BLAST Premier event at the time.
The Spring Final’s grand final saw Team Spirit face off against NAVI. Team Spirit’s underdog victory at IEM Katowice 2024 a few months before the Spring Final put them on the radar for many Counter-Strike fans, and many were curious to see if they could replicable these strong results at other events. NAVI are also just generally wildly popular, and after winning the first-ever Counter-Strike 2 Major, their fanbase has only grown in size this year.
NAVI also appeared in the Fall Final grand final, this time facing off against G2 Esports, one of Europe’s most popular Counter-Strike esports organizations. The match between these two legendary organizations helped the event record the highest-ever peak viewership for a BLAST Premier tournament.
Although NAVI were unable to convert their finalist appearance to a victory at either event, their presence in the grand finals alone was a crucial reason these events were able to reach such high peak viewership. NAVI’s qualification for the World Final 2024 through their Major championship earlier this year is a good sign for the BLAST Premier: if NAVI can advance to the event finals, they will likely drive peak viewership to another impressive peak.
Either Team Spirit or NAVI will have to qualify for the event’s grand final if the tournament wants to match the hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers it has achieved for its events earlier this year. Indeed, in our projections for the most potentially popular grand final match-up, NAVI is a top candidate for high viewership if they can reach the final.
Since the World Final tournament’s debut in 2021, both peak viewership and total watch time for it has fallen each year. The first World Final reached over 727K Peak Viewers and generated 15.6M Hours Watched, but the following 2022 edition could only manage to reach about half of these results. While the drop in viewership in 2023 was not as serious as the previous year, it still marked a slight downturn in viewership for what should be one of BLAST’s most popular tournaments of the year.
The immediately noticeable trend with the World Final events is that the 2022 and 2023 iterations featured no teams to excite Eastern European fans. The 2022 final featured popular G2 Esports and Team Liquid, but both of these teams appeal to the same international, and generally English-speaking, audience. The same was true of the 2023 finals, which featured Team Vitality and FaZe Clan in the final match.
NAVI facing G2 Esports in the grand final would be optimal for the World Final 2024; these two popular teams appeal to two largely different audiences, meaning they will combine their viewership in the finals, rather than compete for the same audience.
In our predictions, this ideal match-up of NAVI against G2 Esports would still just fall short of being the most popular World Final ever, but it would be quite close. Critically, we have to consider the location of the event this year, as it is being held in Asia. The most popular World Final event from 2021 was held in Copenhagen, a middle-point for fans from Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
Some of the early group stage matches at the World Final 2024 will begin as early as 7 AM Central European Time, or around midnight for North American fans. In our viewership projections, we accounted for the effect this timezone could have on viewership. Even in an ideal situation where G2 Esports faces NAVI in the finals, the event’s timezone could negatively affect viewership enough to restrict it to around 500,000 concurrent viewers at peak. In a not-so-ideal scenario, viewership for the World Final 2024 could easily fail to reach even 300K or 400K Peak Viewers.
BLAST Premier: World Final 2024 Teams Popularity
Based on previous viewership for BLAST Premier events this year, NAVI lead the way as the most popular team with over 307.8K Average Viewers recorded throughout the series’ 2024 events. Other highly popular teams include G2 Esports, Team Vitality, and Team Spirit.
Curiously, since MOUZ has not competed at any BLAST Premier tournaments in 2024 so far, we have nothing to compare to for the German organization. When the team has managed strong competitive results, like at IEM Cologne 2024 where they finished in 3rd-4th, they do collect high viewership, but generally, other organizations like FaZe and G2 Esports are simply more popular, even when MOUZ outperforms them at specific events.
While NAVI was the most popular team among fans, they were not the most bet-on team according to GG.BET. Interestingly, less popular teams were more likely to dominate the betting scene in the build-up to the World Final 2024, with Team Vitality and Astralis leading the charge.
Team Vitality will face Team Spirit in their first match, and fans think Team Vitality will have the edge. Team Spirit was the least bet-on team at the event, earning only 6.6% of total bets placed. While the team recorded some incredibly strong results throughout 2024, they have cooled off in the latter part of the year, struggling to record strong results at international events like the Fall Final 2024, IEM Cologne 2024, and the ESL Pro League Season 20.
NAVI’s opening match against Astralis was the most bet-on before the event began, but fans were giving Astralis the edge over the Ukrainian organization. Considering both teams’ 2024 results, NAVI look like they should have the advantage in this match, but the recent signing of CadiaN for Astralis has clearly reignited some hope among the organization’s fans.
CadiaN is one of Counter-Strike 2’s most well-known in-game leaders, and fans obviously have high hopes for his addition to Astralis’ firepower. However, since CadiaN joined the team, their first couple of events have not been successful. They finished in 7th-8th at the Fall Final 2024, and they also finished in 9th-12th at the recent IEM Rio 2024. Despite their first few poor performances, fans have high hopes for what CadiaN can bring to the table, and hopefully lead Astralis back to the top of Counter-Strike competition.
Aside from these two most popular matches, fans have also picked G2 Esports over Team Liquid, and FaZe Clan just barely has received more bets than MOUZ. The BLAST Premier: World Final 2024 begins on October 30, with NAVI facing off against Astralis. Esports Charts will continue to track live-updating viewership data for matches, which are accessible on the tournament page, as well as produce coverage and insights to the event’s viewership in collaboration with GG.BET.
Detailed Esports data at your fingertips.
Subscribe to & start exploring!
