How the new format affected the audience of BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023

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May 3 marked the end of the Playoffs (which were preceded by Play-In stage) of BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023, the first international tournament in Rainbow Six Siege 2023 esports circuit. As it turned out, the change in the format of the Major benefited the tournament series: there were more participants and top matches, and this is exactly what the audience needs.

Statistics of BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023 are available here

Recall that in 2023, Ubisoft decided to make several changes to the format of the tournament season. Firstly, the BLAST was introduced as a new 3rd party organizer of the tournaments, which were previously held by ESL. Secondly, 24 teams now participate in Rainbow Six Siege Majors instead of 16. The organizers have changed the distribution of quotas, adding new regions and even separate national leagues (for example, for Japan and South Korea).

The increase in the number of participants naturally affected the format of the tournament. Majors used to consist of two stages — a group stage (4 groups of 4 teams each) and a single-elimination playoffs bracket for the top 8 teams. BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023 has three stages: Play-In (similar to the group stage), Playoffs (one group for 16 teams with the Swiss system) and the Finals stage (single-elimination for the top 8 teams).

Preliminary statistics for BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023

  BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023 Play-In & Playoffs Stats   

The matches of the Play-in and Playoffs stages together gained more than 3.4 million Hours Watched. The average online of broadcasts amounted to over 40.4K concurrent viewers, and the peak reached 69K viewers. The most popular match was the game between Team Liquid and Wolves Esports in the decisive match for reaching the Finals stage, with Lorenzo Lagonis Volpi’s squad coming out on top with the score of 2:0.

MNM Gaming became the leader in terms of watch time during the first two stages of the tournament (668.5K Hours Watched). The team was far ahead of other teams by the metric, since MNM Gaming played the maximum number of matches in the Play-In and Playoffs stages.

FaZe Clan became the most popular team of the two stages: on average, about 52.6K viewers watched each game of the squad. FaZe Clan started the tournament from the Playoffs stage and advanced to the Finals stage, scoring three quick victories in the Swiss system.

The most popular broadcast language of the two stages of BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023 was English. It scored almost 55% of the total Hours Watched, and also showed 38.7K viewers at the peak. On a platform-by-platform basis, Twitch outperformed YouTube by 6.5x in Hours Watched.

When it comes to popular channels, the official English-language channel Rainbow 6 gained the largest audience during the first two stages of the tournament. The second place was taken by the Razah channel, owned by the Portuguese-speaking streamer of Team Liquid.

Comparison with past R6 Major

If we compare the performance of BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023 and Six Jönköping Major 2022 without the final stages of tournaments, one would notice an increase in peak viewership from 58.3K to 69K concurrent viewers. At the same time, the average number of viewers remained virtually unchanged.

The change in format has benefited the tournament series. There are more matches, and all of them are being actively followed by the viewers throughout both stages. Playoffs format with the Swiss system also increased the value of the matches: top teams can no longer accidentally get themselves an easy group and have to play with equally strong opponents.

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The final stage of BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen 2023 features the eight best teams of the tournament. The matches will take place from 5 to 7 May at Forum Copenhagen. Note that the total prize pool of the event increased 1.5x up to $750,000.