BLAST Premier World Final 2024 struggled to match the season’s viewership highs without NAVI
The BLAST Premier: World Final 2024 marked the end of the 2024 BLAST Premier season, and brought 8 of the world’s top teams together to Singapore to compete for the million dollar prize pool. While the event was the most popular World Final event for the BLAST Premier series since 2021, it failed to match up to the other 2024 events. The World Final was oddly the least popular Final tournament of the 2024 BLAST Premier calendar.
Esports Charts presents the viewership results of the World Final 2024, as well as the most popular teams, players, and the most popular map of the event. In collaboration with betting brand GG.BET, we are happy to provide insights on the popularity of teams and players among esports bettors. We also thank DATA.BET, a leading provider of esports betting solutions, for their support in gathering game statistics.
Ultimately, the World Final 2024 received 8.69M Hours Watched, notably much less than other 2024 BLAST Premier events with similar airtime: such as both the Spring/Fall Groups and Final. English was the most popular language of the event, having received 267K Peak Viewers, with Russian emerging as the other major language group for the tournament.
Polish-language viewers were also highly influential for the tournament, even outperforming Portuguese-speaking fans, who are usually a major audience for Counter-Strike. This wave of Polish support likely came about due to G2 Esports’ newest player, Snax. The Polish professional is a legend of the Counter-Strike franchise, with a long history of top-level competition across Counter-Strike, CS:GO, and now, CS2.
At its peak, the tournament reached 556.5K Peak Viewers for the third and final map of the grand final. The best-of-five final was won decisively by G2 Esports, who looked inexorable on their way to proclaiming themselves BLAST Premier champions for 2024. They swiftly dispatched their rivals Team Spirit in only three maps, with TS only accumulating 19 rounds across the entire match.
While G2 Esports’ strong performance helped the event to pique the interest of many international fans, some key audiences for Counter-Strike did not fully realise their potential at the event. Critically, NAVI’s early elimination from the event left the tournament without one of the game’s most popular teams. In our preview for the World Final 2024, we highlighted that NAVI reaching the final matches would be crucial for the tournament to match the record-breaking viewership of other 2024 BLAST Premier events, but the Ukrainian organization did not even manage to qualify for playoffs.
In our event preview, we also discussed how time zones could impact viewership, with the event taking place in Singapore. Ultimately, this appeared to mostly affect Portuguese-language viewership, which recorded particularly low watch time and a low peak concurrent viewership.
Throughout the entire World Final 2024, Team Spirit was the most popular team, with over 299.1K Average Viewers recorded for all their games. While the Serbian-Russian organization is popular on its own, it also benefitted from largely playing against other highly popular teams at the event. Team Spirit’s matches against world-famous teams G2 Esports, Astralis, Vitality, and FaZe Clan helped boost their viewership ahead of other teams.
Other popular teams include famous organizations Astralis, G2 Esports, and Team Vitality. Team Liquid managed to finish the tournament as one of its most popular teams, despite being eliminated from the groups with a 0-2 record. Team Liquid played only two matches, one against G2 Esports, and another against Team Vitality: two highly-popular organizations in Counter-Strike.
In terms of shares of bets, G2 Esports led the way as the bettors’ favourite to win the event, with 19.33% of all bets backing the organization. These esports fans also held faith in Team Vitality and Team Spirit, although neither of these teams were able to topple G2. In an odd twist, NAVI was the least-popular team of the World Final 2024. The Ukrainian organization is usually one of esports’ most beloved teams, but they suffered two swift losses against Astralis and FaZe Clan, and fans did not seem interested in watching NAVI in their current form.
G2 Esports claimed their second victory of the 2024 BLAST Premier season, following their championship at the Fall Final 2024. The German organization has been picking up speed during the latter half of 2024, and they currently stand as one of the strongest teams competing in the entire esports scene.
M0nesy of G2 was crowned as the most-valued player of the event, with the gameplay stats to back it up. In terms of total kills throughout the entire event, he ranked as the third-strongest player, and he was the 4th best player in terms of opening kills. On top of taking these early fights, he also managed to tie in first for the most total clutches won, as well as holding the record for the most AWP kills at the event. Despite only being the fourth-most-bet-on player, m0nesy showed why he is one of Counter-Strike’s most popular star players.
Looking towards the rest of the star players who appeared at the World Final 2024, donk was not only one of the strongest performers in terms of Kill/Death difference, but he was also the most-bet-on player for the tournament. The Team Spirit star player received 9.38% of all bets, making him noticeably more popular than other high-performers.
NiKo and ZywOo are two legendary Counter-Strike players, and two of the most-recognisable Counter-Strike 2 professionals still competing. They received 8.71% and 7.04% of all bets, respectively, leading the way for their teams. Despite ZywOo recording a massively impressive +53 K/D difference, his team were defeated by NiKo and the rest of G2 Esports in the semifinal.
Other players from FaZe Clan and G2 Esports made up this ranking, with MOUZ and NAVI contributing one player each. Among these most-bet-on players, Team Vitality was the only team to squeeze three of their players into this ranking, including their stand-in, Jackz. The European organization currently stands at the forefront of Counter-Strike esports, and they are the team to beat for many of the world’s top competitors.
While the BLAST Premier World Final 2024 was highly watched compared to past iterations of the season-ending tournament, it failed to match the high viewership of other 2024 BLAST Premier events. Without fan-favourites NAVI advancing to the playoffs, the event did not manage to maximise its potential viewership, but it still marked growth compared to the past couple of World Final tournaments. Keep an eye on the Esports Charts blog, as we have another article in collaboration with GG.BET in the works, highlighting some advanced statistics for the World Final 2024.
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