BLAST R6 Major Atlanta 2023 Playoffs receives just 5% more watch time than previous Major
The Playoffs stage of the BLAST R6 Major Atlanta 2023 has ended, and 8 teams have advanced into the Finals of the event. The Major is the second and final event of the year, following on from the Copenhagen 2023 event, and the Finals stage commences on November 10.
Late last week, we analysed the first-day viewership of the event and found it garnered 23% more Peak Viewers than the Copenhagen Major’s opening day. Despite the early strong start for the Atlanta event, it struggled to continue to generate higher viewership as the event progressed.
In total, the Playoffs Swiss Stage of the event reached 2.31M Hours Watched and garnered 61K Peak Viewers. The most popular match in the stage was G2 Esports against Geekay Esports. G2 emerged victorious with a 7:5 scoreline, becoming one of two teams, alongside FaZe Clan, to qualify for the Finals with a perfect 3-0 record in the Playoffs.
The format of the Swiss Stage Playoffs group was exactly the same as the one featured at the Copenhagen 2023 Major, so the increase in Airtime is purely due to longer and closer matches. Increased Airtime logically increases watch time, but the 5.5% rise in watch time was also helped by community casters. The Atlanta Major Playoffs stage was casted by over 80 channels, 73% more than Copenhagen’s Playoffs.
The top-performing community casters were largely the same between both Major events, but the pure increase in the amount of community members supporting the Atlanta Major helped its Playoffs to record a 5.5% increase in watch time, despite a 5.9% drop in Average Viewers.
With FaZe Clan proceeding through the Atlanta Playoffs with a flawless 3-0 record, they are the only team in 2023 to achieve a 3-0 record in Playoffs at both Majors of the year. FaZe Clan were unable to convert this record into an event win, but they have another chance at a perfect even run.
As mentioned, G2 Esports’ match against Geekay Esports was the most popular match of the Playoffs. Interestingly, this match recorded no peak viewers for any language throughout the Playoffs stage. The match received a diverse range of viewership from various international audiences, but it was not the most popular match for any language.
In contrast, Team BDS achieved two of the top three most popular matches for the stage, partially thanks to French viewership. The Swiss organisation boasts an entirely French roster in Rainbow Six, and French fans drove these two matches to become the most popular of the entire Playoffs for French-speaking broadcasts. Thanks to the BDS vs w7m match, French is currently the third most popular language of the event, beating out Japanese by less than 50 concurrent viewers.
Portuguese was also hugely influential in the BDS and w7m match, as Portuguese-speaking fans contributed more than 11K to the total Peak Viewers figure for this match. This was not the most popular match among Portuguese-speaking fans though; the Brazillian derby match between NiP and LOS reached 11.9K Peak Viewers from Portuguese-language broadcasts.
In summary, the BLAST R6 Major Atlanta 2023 event is not breaking any major viewership records for the discipline, but viewership is not low either. The Major is performing on par with the Copenhagen Major which took place earlier this year and received 4.83M Hours Watched by the end of the event. This amount of watch time is typical for a Rainbow Six Siege Major event, and you can browse the viewership of these past Major events with our list of Rainbow 6: Siege tournaments.
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